Turning a segmented walnut & redheart bowl with death star builder Frank Howarth
This time building a sleek segmented walnut and redheart bowl, woodturner and YouTube star Frank Howarth once again shows us that he is a master.
 
I had a walnut bowl that I had started to hollow out, but never finished.  It developed several severe cracks in it.  I first cut the bowl into five pieces: three that I would keep and two with the cracks that I would not.  I needed to remake those two pieces.  I did this by making a completely second segmented bowl with the same overall form as the original walnut bowl.  I could cut out the pieces that I need for the first bowl out of the new bowl.
 
The segmented bowl was made from walnut and redheart wood.  It was assembled from rings of twelve 1/2 inch thick segments.  I sanded all of the joints between each piece and then glued all the pieces together making a bowl I could turn on the lathe.  I started on the lathe by making a tenon for my scroll chuck.  Then, I turned the piece around and held it in the scroll chuck to do the majority of the turning.  I wiped the bowl down with mineral spirits to get the dust off. Finally, I finished it with a linseed oil beeswax mix.
 
Howarth is the creator of the bamboo Death Star and turner of the wooden eyeball. 
 
In honor of Star Wars Day, Howarth constructed a wooden Death Star – and filmed the process in timelapse.
Howarth built the bamboo death star using a CNC, a lathe, and conventional equipment - filming the entire process in timelapse. He also turned a wooden eyeball from maple, cherry, birch, walnut, and ebony.
 
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About the author
Robert Dalheim

Robert Dalheim is an editor at the Woodworking Network. Along with publishing online news articles, he writes feature stories for the FDMC print publication. He can be reached at [email protected].