Power Carved Bowls & Trays: Fast & Easy with Minimal Tools

Power carving bowls and trays. This is a blast and it's super easy to do. And all you need is an angle grinder, any angle grinder. There's lots of different attachments you can choose from, but it's pretty simple, pretty easy to do. Uh, like my router bowl video and my router tray video, lots of options. Uh, so in my videos, I give you a comprehensive look at different material types, including firewood. That's actually a great application for this, uh, exotic woods, hardwoods. I'll talk about wood movement. I'll talk about, uh, different finish options, accessories, a lot of good stuff here. So sit back, enjoy power carving. It is a blast. This video is sponsored by Valencia home theater seating. So to start off, just want to give you a little taste, a little tease, uh, of the process before we go full tutorial. Uh, so just a quick time-lapse here, uh, just to give a feel, uh, the attachment goes on really easily and it is super quick and intuitive and you can really refine the shape into whatever you're looking for and you can make quick work of it. What's great about this type of project is it's a just afternoon project from start to finish. You have a completed thing. Uh, so it is pretty fun. There's more steps, uh, later as far as sanding and, and contours, but as well as different finish types, this is just a little taste, a little tease, uh, before we go full tutorial mode. All right. The sponsor of this video is Valencia home theater seats. These are ridiculous. Obviously we are not in a home theater right now. We are in a family room. Uh, so these seats are great for a family room, for a living room, any space, but they would be pretty, pretty amazing in a home theater. We make lots of sports signs, right? So I love making, you know, all my different sports teams. So I'm going to watch the big game. I'm going to watch the big game. And so obviously premium seats, right? Premium next level leather. Uh, we got all kinds of lumbar support. We got power headrests, you know, movie nighttime, right? You can just mess around with some led lights, chargers. They're super slick, uh, accessories galore. So check out the website down below the link to learn more about these amazing, amazing seats and consider upgrading, upgrading, right? Treat yourself, uh, after some woodshop action, uh, power carving, some bowls or whatnot. Come on in rest, enjoy premium luxury seating. All right, here we go. Some more action of the bolts. All right. The wood, what wood to choose? Some considerations for wood. There are some tips here that will save you some super headaches with your finished project. You don't need it though. Skip ahead, use those timestamps. All right. So obviously there's lots of choices. You could use softwoods or hardwoods. This is a great project just to use firewood. And so the very first thing I did, I had like a log like this, it's an apple tree. I sealed the ends cause it was pretty wet. I let it kind of dry out in the garage for a while and made this right. So you can kind of see the tree. You got a lot of really cool, funky stuff going on here. And I went with kind of a funky carve here with a, this ball gouge here. You'll see that shortly. Um, anyway, the consideration with firewood, if it's a log that has that center pith, that's probably going to cause some splitting and cracking. And so, uh, bowl makers know this when they create their blanks, uh, for turning bowls on a lathe, they always eliminate the pith. And so a piece like this, right? The pith is pretty much gone. There was some splitting and cracking, but what I did with this piece, I sealed the end with wood glue. You can use a product like anchor seal or a latex paint, uh, something you just want to slow down, uh, the drying as it comes out the end grain. Otherwise the whole board will split or you'll get really deep gouges. Kind of like you can see here. I couldn't control this with this wood. Um, anyway, so that's something to consider if you're going to use firewood, again, a great application, uh, you know, a family tree, you know, how to come down. You're going to make something cool out of it, a centerpiece for Thanksgiving or whatnot. So firewood is great. I love, I love, I love just using hardwood. So, you know, go to your lumber yard and get some just beautiful stuff like this Santos mahogany thick block. I love pieces for this to have a little sapwood and heartwood contrast. So cherry walnut is fantastic, of course, but you can find a big thick, thick one. This one did have the pith in it, but most of the time they don't. Anyway, this Santos mahogany turns into something like this, right? Uh, so you got some options. And then of course, if you want to go for the striped effect, I love this. This is like what an edge grain cutting board. Uh, so this was for my router bowl video where you get all these cool exotics, you know, purple heart, it'll splash a color and you just go ahead and glue up a blank like this. And so that's another option for you. If you want to learn more about woods, wood selection consideration, I do have another video wood one-on-one also where to buy this wood tips. So you can check out that video as well. So one of those firewood pieces you can see right here, it's a little bit of that pith leftover. Uh, but this is one that I did seal with that glue and it dried out over time. Now I'm just removing the bark. Um, what's great about this is you can use all kinds of different wood. You might not know what it is. Pretty sure this is some maple. But what I decided to do is go ahead and trim off the edges just to clamp it a little bit easier. This isn't necessary. Uh, but by doing so you can really see, uh, it did save a lot of cracking. So there are a lot of cracks in the outside. I still had one, uh, but that was cause the pith was still there. So it really shows you how that sealing really helps, uh, especially if you're doing firewood or wood, that's already wet. So here I'm just clamping it down. So there's lots of different ways to clamp your wood. Uh, this is an armor tool station with inline clamps. There's a lot of other options, but you do need a secure piece. Uh, this is a spinning blade. It can be super dangerous if you're not careful. Uh, but you're just refining the shape. And so this turbo plan I'll talk about a little bit more later, really does a great job of removing the material. You just mark it out with your marker or a pencil and just kind of get a feel for it. Uh, but again, clamping can be tricky sometimes. So, uh, a trigger clamp or some of these inline clamps or auto adjust clamps work great. But to really refine your shape, a sander is, is clutch. So any kind of sander, there's attachments for the angle grinder. Uh, but just your normal wood shop sander is really going to refine it to what you want it to look like, especially on the outside, it's a little tricky on the interior. There's some specialty tools that we'll look at right here, like the contour sander also just attaches to the angle grinder and you can, you know, smooth everything out quickly, lots of other specialty sanders. I actually have another video that talks about specialty sanders. Uh, you can check that on my channel. Um, but you just, this one right here in particular does a great job of removing any tooling marks, or if you, you know, kind of messed up a bit and it gets it nice and smooth. So I did have a couple cracks, so I'm using CA glue and activator. It's a super glue and it works really quick. Uh, you could use epoxy if you had a bigger issue here. I had that split. I thought I got most of it with carving, but still have it. I went with a thinner CA glue to really get in there. And, uh, with the activator, it cured right away and you really can't tell, uh, unless you know, to look for it. All right. And now I'm just adding some finish later in the video. I'll go a little bit slower, actually a lot slower and talk about all the different finish types. And this is just one, uh, finish type. This is Osmo, uh, Poly-X. It's a hard wax and, uh, it's a great finish, get great results. Uh, but again, other finishes coming shortly. All right. I want to talk about the disc I'm using a little bit more and yes, everything you see here is ArborTech. They did send this to me a couple of years ago and I've used it a lot. There's other products out there, but when it comes to this application, especially this turbo plane, there's nothing like the engineering. They've been around forever. So there's some other brands out there that you could certainly find. But I love this. This just hogs out material like crazy, especially for these bigger bowls. You just attach it really easily. So this is the turbo plane. They also have this one called the ball gouge. This one works really well. And so for a funky, unique piece, you can get into those nooks and crannies. This one was mostly just the ball gouge. I use the angle grinder a little bit, but you could certainly do the whole thing with this. So if you have a really interesting piece, this adds a lot. My favorite thing they make. Absolutely. I use this for all my projects is this. It's the contour sander. And so it's just, it contours. I used it for all of my different videos, both the power carving. It's just a lot, but this attaches to the angle grinder and it's just amazing for sanding. It saves you such a headache. They do have other units. They have a whole self-contained unit, a power carving kit with this sanders and such. They have their precision carving system. If you want to do intricate little details. And then this one is like a mini grinder. So if you want to get more into carving some unique pieces, lots of possibilities there. So just want to give them a shout out because they sent me these a few years ago and I love it. I'm a huge fan. So check down below if you want to learn more about the accessories and options. All right. Going to do the full walkthrough on a tray like this. So marking it out. I like using chalk. Chalk works really well. It shows up, you can adjust it. Sometimes I use pencil or marker. But again, that turbo plane really removes the material quickly and sometimes too quickly. So I wanted to show this like this was a whoopsie and like, let's just be real. We make whoopsies in woodworking. And so I went too far. I didn't measure and I just wanted to get a little more. And I went all the way through the piece. So I made a hole in my bowl. But not to worry. You know, I went ahead and finished it, smoothed everything out, kind of finessed it with that turbo plane. Again, you can switch to other attachments to get a little bit more, but you can actually get a lot with that. But I added some CA glue and some sawdust and the activator just to plug the hole. It wasn't perfect. And I probably should have just gotten out some sanding, a sander and sanded down to get all the fine dust. When you're patching a hole in wood, you really want to use the fine sawdust to match the color. And you can add wood glue. It worked fine. It wasn't the best patch, but it worked here. I'm just removing the corners again. That turbo plane just works so quickly. You can, if you want to save time, like use a sled on a table saw to remove it or get out a jigsaw or a bandsaw if you want to save some time, that certainly is an option. But you can do everything just with the angle grinder and the turbo plane itself. So here I flipped it over. You can see that hole was a little bit bigger. All those lines there, this board had a bunch of cracks that I filled with epoxy before I even started. This won't be the case with most wood. There are attachments for angle grinder, other sander attachments. Here's just another one I use, or you could just use a sander. But again, that contour sander is amazing. For the little sandpaper discs, Arbortech makes their own. I just buy two inch sandpaper discs of different varying grit, and I just drill a hole through them, save a little money. You go through them a lot faster, but you can save some money that way. For sanding, I usually do 80 grit, then 120 grit, and then 150. If I'm using the contour sander, and if I have to remove a lot of material, I might go lower to like a 60 or 40, but my typical sanding is 80, 120, 150, and then I raise the grain. So you're getting the wood fibers wet, so they kind of stand up, and then you can sand them back down. So this process, if a board is going to get, or a bowl is going to get washed, it'll get rough to the touch if you skip that step. So here just makes the board, the bowl, the tray last longer. And then I'm hand sanding the 220 afterwards, and then I'm adding my finish. So lots of finish. This is just a wax and oil finish, buffing in that beeswax, and it's a beautiful tray, right? It turned out great. See how I'm strategically hiding that hole? But we know it's there. We know it's there, and you patched it. But when it's full of stuff, you can't even tell. So there you go. All right, wood finish. So when you're finishing your bowl, your tray, so many options. In all my videos, I like to use a lot of different finishes, so you can see that. But I just want to explain some of the options here. If it's going to be food safe, well, technically, most finishes when they cure are food safe. It's not necessarily food grade materials, but it's food safe. It's cured. However, there's liability if you're going to sell things, or if you just want that peace of mind, then buy ingredients that are food grade, are food safe. So the go-to finish for cutting boards and for a lot of people is just mineral oil. So you just do mineral oil, and then you can apply a wood wax afterwards. You can make your own with mineral oil and beeswax. Or my favorite option is walrus oil. This stuff is amazing. Not sponsored. I've always bought my own. It's incredible. It's great. This is their cutting board wax. It's incredible. Or you can use their cutting board oil. That's a great finish, and it's easy to reapply for conditioning. There's a whole video Mark Spagnuolo, the wood whisperer, did on tongue oil. And as far as food safe finishes, I'll leave a link to that down below. But I've done this for a couple of things. It's a lot more labor intensive, but it lasts a lot longer and it's totally food safe. So that's an option. Walrus oil. I just, they're a great company and they make a lot of other finishes. This one is kind of like Odie's oil. I don't use Odie's oil anymore because of lots of drama and like kind of throwing hobbyists under the bus. Drama. Instagram. You can check it out. Anyway, this is a great one. If you want to use Odie's, go for it. But I don't use it anymore. Tried and true. This stuff is great. I use this on my router trays. Fantastic stuff. It's kind of this, again, it's food safe, a little bit more application. This one is a hard wax. And so this, yeah, sure. It's used for floors, but it's also used for other things. It's a great, there's lots of hard waxes out there, but I love Osmo. It's great stuff. Again, you know, just think about liability with all that. But it seals really well after two coats. It's my favorite finish for coasters. Or you could go with the film finish, right? You can do a shellac. Armor seal is my favorite. You know, instead of a polyurethane, it's just a little bit thinner. But if you want to give it, you know, like a satin or a glossy look, but if it's going to be display and maybe not come in contact with food, or you can just do a spray lacquer. This is my favorite one right here. So some food safe options and maybe not food safe options, just finish options or whatever you want. Danish oil. Bees, uh, oiled linseed, plenty of options out there. Just some things that I've used in the past. So use it or lose it. So really quickly, I want to show that ball gouge attachment. You can get some really cool results. You can get into some tighter corners. Also, it adds a really cool effect. There's a lot of textural elements you can add. Uh, it looks a lot more organic. Uh, and this piece is just beautiful. It's this, that apple log. So if you have like a fruit tree or a small tree or a log, you can get some really unique pieces. A little bit more art form, uh, like this. So, so definitely some possibilities and yeah, absolutely use it. Last but not least is a layered power carved project. This was a really fun one. So I glued up a piece of walnut, cherry, and then a figured maple bottom. You could, um, I have some steps in my router tray 101 video on how to save the material. So you're not wasting all that material, at least in the top two layers. And so I give some tips on that in that video, if you want to see how to go about that, but just go ahead and carve on through like normal. That turbo plane just really removes the material quickly for this one. I'm adding a different element. So the interior is removed like usual, and I can make the whole thing rounded and fully power carve. Uh, but instead I want like a little modern look, uh, where you have power carving on the inside and then you have 45 degree, like a heavy chamfer on the bottom. And I went to the table saw. So this was from a couple of years ago, uh, where just a 45 degree bevel and I'm just cutting off, you know, with a rip cut here on the table saw. And then I'm doing the same thing on the other side. And so this just adds a different look. Um, you know, you can play around with this. There's definitely some, some really cool possibilities here. Uh, but after I get the length wise, then I'm going to do a cross cut. You can use a sled, you can use it a couple of ways. You just kind of eyeball it. And, uh, so you got the bevel. So it's a cool look. And then of course we're finishing off the sanding. There's plenty of sanding. Uh, like always you could add a router profile too, because you have a, you know, kind of a squared edge. Um, there's some possibilities here, but sand it, make it look nice and clean. And then, um, you know, finish off with some more sanding, some more hand sanding. Uh, there is another tool that I use now that eliminates hand sanding. It's the surf prep with their little foam discs. That's amazing. I love that. And then I'm adding finish. You can see all that color. The figure comes through on that maple on the bottom. It's pretty fantastic. Uh, so definitely check out the different woods, but, uh, here's another idea, another idea for power carving. All right, folks, there you have it. Power carving bowls and trays. If this video provided value for you, please consider subscribing to see more videos like this. Uh, check out my other videos on those router bowls, those router trays. Uh, lots of just different possibilities. So if you want to see more power carving content, I'd love to jump into some more. Uh, let me know in the comments. I can explore all the possibilities, but, uh, links to the stuff down below. And yes, again, thank you to Valencia for sponsoring this video. Those seats are ridiculous, like ridiculous. So treat yourself, at least check it out, check out the website. Uh, give them a little love, uh, you know, support the channel in that way. Just, just a little click. All right. Thanks for watching until next time.