Carving Patterned Plywood Bowls

Hey everyone, welcome back to the workshop. Michael Holm here. So this week we're going to be working on another patterned plywood project. My friends over at ArborTech Tools have sponsored this video and that means we're going to do some power carving. I'm super excited about this. I've experimented with one other project where I power carved patterned plywood and it turned out awesome. So I think these are going to turn out pretty good as well. So you may recognize this technique from previous videos. This is going to be the chevron pattern, but I'm going to do a different spin on it this time. All these strips are made out of three quarter inch Baltic birch plywood. They're cut to two inches by 30 inches and I decided to do them in two separate glue ups just because with that many parts, sometimes the glue can set up before you're ready to start clamping. So it was definitely the safe move. Once the blank had plenty of time to dry, I can move it over to the workbench and scrape it down. I use a paint scraper to remove all that excess glue. The first cut that I need to make on the blank is a 45 degree cut and I just use my track saw and a framing square to get this done. After that, I can move over to the table saw and use the table saw fence to get a whole series of strips. In the past, I've cut all these out at the same width, but with this project, I wanted to experiment a little bit and so I decided to cut them out at a whole bunch of different widths. So the first ones I think I started out with at two inches, the second ones were at one inch and then I cut a whole series of them at half an inch. I played around with the strips a little bit to figure out what patterns I liked and then once I was satisfied, I moved back over to the workbench and prepped for another glue up. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again, when you glue up patterned plywood, make sure you're using plenty of glue. I use a paint roller and I went through tons of it on this because that edge grain of the plywood just really absorbs a lot of glue. So you want to make sure you've got plenty of squeeze out so that your glue up is really nice and strong. With those out of the clamps, I could scrape them down just like before and then get ready to do my design. When I designed these, I didn't really have a plan. I kind of just went with what shapes came out of the glue up and as I was drawing, I ended up with these sort of long oval shapes. I thought they make really cool bowls, like fruit bowls or like a table centerpiece sort of thing. So with that established, I can move on to the power carving equipment. So I'm using the Arbortech Turbo Plane for most of the shaping. This is a great tool if you're just getting started into power carving. It's a very versatile tool and you've seen me use it on a number of other projects. One thing that I would recommend if you're using this tool is to clamp your workpiece down. I learned the hard way on this piece that this block of wood was not heavy enough to stay put and I ended up getting a big old scar across the surface of it. I was not too happy about that, but I actually decided to leave it in there just as a reminder. I'm resetting here. I did clamp the workpiece down and after that point, it didn't shift at all. One of the cool things that I discovered on this project was that you can actually use a block of wood as a template when you're using the Turbo Plane. So I needed these nice, straight, long edges along the sides of these bowls and I could actually just ride the top edge of that Turbo Plane, which is completely flat without any teeth, along that edge and I could get a really beautiful, clean line. By the way, if you have been thinking about picking up a set of Arbortech tools, now is a very good time because I've got an offer code for 20% off any tool in their lineup for people in the U.S. and Canada. All you have to do is enter ALMFAB20 at checkout and you get 20% off. With the centers carved out, I can now cut off the ends. I cut them off on the bandsaw, roughly, and then I can sand them to their final shape on the belt sander. Alright, it is the third day on this project and they're coming out awesome. So the first day I worked on the glue-ups and got this one dished out. The second day, I actually did this on a live stream. I carved this whole thing out on the Global Maker Fest live stream, so that's saved to my channel. You can go check that out if you'd like. It's like a Q&A and then I've also got a Q&A of the shop, asking me a whole bunch of questions about how I use my shop. So go check that out. That was an event put on by Arbortech. It was super fun. Now I'm going to get back into power carving this guy. This one I'm going to take outside. It needs a little bit of touch-up. It's almost there. And then I can cut this one out and start working on the bottoms. Alright, so I have this one all sanded and shaped. I'm going to do two different designs on these. I'm going to do two different styles of feet. This one, it's going to be kind of like a C-shape. And then this one, I'm going to do four little fat feet underneath here and then carve the whole thing out underneath. So I think they're both going to look pretty cool. The one thing that I want to do before I go back out to power carving is establish where the feet are going to be. And I'm going to do that by just doing shallow passes with the table saw. So the first one that I'm cutting out is the one with the C-shapes on the bottom. And really that only takes two main passes. And you'll see that I set up a stop block to make sure that it's in the exact same spot on both sides. After that, I can remove the stop block and then just run it through multiple passes on my saw to clear out that material. Now I get a lot of questions about how strong pattern plywood is. And this is kind of a case for it being very, very strong. I was hoping that I could just tear through these little tabs and that was not the case at all. It was way too tough, even with a chisel. So I went back to the table saw, cleared out all the tabs and then slid it back and forth once those were all cleared out to flatten that bottom. With that one flattened and ready for carving, I can move on to the second bowl. And this one, I just set up where the feet were going to be. And then I did the same thing. I made some establishing cuts with the crosscut sled. And then I could hog out the material with the table saw blade. I know a lot of people are going to say that this would be a lot easier with a dado stack. And it certainly would have been. But I don't have a crosscut sled with a dado stack set up. So this was the best solution. It really didn't take that long. So the next step was to power carve the bottoms of the bowls. And I was kind of just going off the cuff when it came to the design. I was letting the tool sort of dictate what it would allow me to do. And so I ended up with these cupped undersides and then the sides of them looked a little bit flat. So I used the pole saw, cut a relief notch and then I could round it over using the turbo plane. Now, one thing that you can't really do with the rotary tool is get into corners very well. So for that, I use these cut saw rasps. I have a set of these and there are two different grits. This one's the heavier grit and I can use that for shaping. And the gold one is a lighter grit and that's used to refine it. And after going through this, a little bit of elbow grease and you've got a really nice sharp edge. So I wanted to experiment with both these bowls. So for the second one, I'm doing a very different technique and rounding the entire thing over. One thing that you might notice when I'm carving is that I don't really carve from the wrists as much as I do from the shoulders and the hips. And this allows me to get much longer, smoother lines as well as gives me a lot more control over the tool while I carve. I continue to separate out the feet and I've got a couple of lines that I'm following on there. I'm working my way up to those circles and they don't have to be perfect because I'm going to shape them using another tool, but I can get the bulk of the material out with the turbo plane. The tool that I'm going to be using to trim down the feet and get them to shape is called a Fordham. This is basically a souped up Dremel tool. It's called a flex shaft carver. It's like a Dremel with an extension cord on it. It uses these burrs that just hog out material like crazy. And they're great for shaping small parts like this. Now, if you don't have a Fordham, which I know not everyone has, the rasps are a great solution for this. You can still use the rasps to do this kind of shaping. It might just take a little bit longer. With all the carving done, now it's time to switch to sanding. And I used a couple different devices for sanding. One of them is this, the contour sander from Arbortech. It's super handy at getting into those little nooks and crannies with its flexible head. It's also a random orbit sander, so it eliminates all those swirl marks. For the convex section, I used my Mirka palm sander. This is a great way to just get rid of those hills and valleys that are created when you're power carving. For the interior of the bowl, I go back to the contour sander. It is just great at refining that edge and getting into the places where most other sanders can't. After going through the grits, it's time to apply a finish. And for this, I'm using a water-based polyurethane. I like this a lot because it doesn't really darken the wood at all, but it puts a nice protective coat over the surface of it. And after three coats of finish, they're all done. Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed that video, and if you did, I have a full playlist on all of the patterned plywood videos I've done so far. So make sure you go and check that out, and I will catch you on the next one.