Making Wood Vegetable Chopping Bowls From Boards and Little Pieces

My first two wood bowls were small and required removing a lot of material from inside and outside of short, solid cylinders. For family and friends I wanted to make a series of much larger bowls to make chopping garlic, onions and other vegetables less messy than using knives and flat cutting boards. Very large chunks of clear wood appropriate for cutting bowls are not readily available. 

Gluing together flat boards that have been cut into rings that together form a rough bowl allows one to use many kinds of kiln-dried lumber. Judiciously cutting the outsides and insides of a large disc at a 45 degree angle enables the small inside disc become another layer. In these bowls, the disc cut from the inside of layer four becomes layer two and the bottom layer comes from layer three.

Scroll Saw Setup with Table at 45 Degrees Here Making the Inside Cut of Layer Four

Closeup of Saw Blade Cutting on the Pencil Line

Four Bowl Levels Are Made from Two Yellow Birch Discs: Top View

Rear Discs Make Layers Two and Four. Front Discs Make Bottom  and Third Layers

Stacked Solid Discs on Left, Bowl Mockup  on Right

Gluing Four Layers Together

Rear View Showing Bowl Glued to Sacrificial Plywood Mounted to Lathe

Front View Roughing Out Bowl Inside

Top Ring Alternating Cherry and Walnut Wood Trapezoids Being Glued Together

Top View During Final Sanding

Rear View Prior to Splitting Off the Plywood Mount

Bottom View of Finished Bowl with Chopping Knife and
Leather Sheath

Bowls require a chopping implement with a curve that has an equal or smaller radius than the bowl inside. An ordinary knife doesn't work. I cut the blade blank from a sheet of 0.060 inch stainless steel and polished it with buffing compounds. The handle is carved and sanded cherry. The wings of the leather sheath hit the handles so the blade doesn't cut the lacing that holds the two sides together. 

Bowl Inside View

For an earlier bowl I made a chopping implement that had two handles with slots that rotated around so they covered the blade. I don't know which I prefer because they accompanied bowls that are now on the west coast. I have blanks cut but harvesting and processing vegetables is keeping me from finishing them.

Chopping Implement with Handles That Cover the Blade When Not in Use

My First Chopping Bowl with the "Dee" Handled Chopper Showing Its Radius Smaller Than the Bowl. The Bowl Rim Has Cherry Trapezoids and Is Not As Fancy As Later Bowls

The Second Chopping Bowl Also Used Cherry Trapezoids But Had Narrow Pine Strips to Delineate Them