Wooden Bowls from the Scroll Saw: 28 Useful and Surprisingly Easy-to-Make Projects (Fox Chapel Publishing) Make Beautiful Vessels from Wood Without a Lathe (Scroll Saw Woodworking & Crafts Book)

I love the idea of wood turning, but just cannot believe I'd want to make enough, bowls, pepper mills etc. to justify the massive cost of all the equipment required. It is also, as indeed is pointed out in this book, very wasteful on what can be very expensive woods as most of it ends up as sawdust! However, as a model aircraft builder and flier I had just replaced my old, cheap, scroll saw with the brilliant Axminster EX-16 which is absolutely perfect for the techniques described in this book as, unlike all the others, the bed stays flat and the arm tilts over.The techniques to make bowls, vases, etc using a scroll saw are very well described in the book which takes you through many different designs and, really, are not difficult to do as long as you can cut ok at angles up to 45 degrees and are able to drill holes at the same angles (the book explains how to make a drilling jig for a hand drill if you don't have a pillar drill that can handle angles).The only problem, if you do not also have a big bandsaw, planer/ jointer and thicknesser (at which point costs are soaring again) is that whilst in the USA getting thinner wood (6mm - 20mm thick) perfect for scrollsawing and box making, etc. is really easy in absolutely everything from Ash, Oak etc right through to wonderful exotics such as African Blackwood and Zebrawood. In the UK, every single one of the specialist and exotic wood suppliers I can find has vast stocks of wood turning blanks and absolutely none of the thinner sheets of wood you ideally need for this.Fortunately I found Surrey Timbers who were really helpful, had planks of wood to drool over and said they would happily mill the wood down for me. One other supplier I might try is SLEC, they specialise in modelling supplies but have 4 inch wide by 36" or 48" long Walnut, Mahogany and Basswood (Lime) in everything from 1/16" to 1/2" in 1/16" steps. The book does also explain well how to adjust the angles, widths etc used in the patterns if you do use woods of different thicknesses.To try my hand at following one of the designs without possibly ruining expensive woods I resorted to gluing some old Mahogany veneer to cheap Birch ply. My wife was so impressed with the result that even this wood produced that I completed the sanding and varnishing as can be seen in the attached photo.Now to start gluing bits of PurpleHeart and Chamfuta together........ ;-)

I have given this book 5 stars as it is very imformative as regards how to produce a bowl using this method .....i have had an attempt at doing what was described ....but i think i need alot of practice to produce the quality shown in the book .....but hopefully i will get better with practicethumbs up from meDave

Very informative Instructions concise

If you are interested in making wooden bowls, using your scroll saw, in my opinion you can do no better than obtaining this book.Clear, precise instructions, together with a number of interesting projects to get you started.

Nice and clear writing. Lovely projects

Excellent book thank you

great

Love it some great designs to try.