How to carve flutes
The fluting is easy, sanding is the hard part. I used the indexing wheel and a curved tool rest with a pencil on top to mark off 24 equally spaced lines. I measured 3/8 inch on each side ( and made an additional mark (in red). I used a carbide burr in my foredom carver to cut the flutes and completed the fine carving with a dremell tool with smaller burrs. The hard part was to sand. I was able to place the bowl back on the lathe and do some sanding with 120 grit with the lathe moving at 50 rpm. This will smoothen the rough edges and round over the flutes. In order to sand into the flutes, it was a combination of a randon orbit sander, detail sander and lots of hand sanding.
This detail would be more difficult on a small bowl, this one is 16" diameter which allowed a lot of room between the flutes.
This bowl also has 3 carved feet. These were shaped with an angle grinder and a flap wheel sanding disc then smoothed on the lathe followed by power and hand sanding.
Honestly, this bowl sat in my shop for about 3 months, I would sand a while, and not touch it for a week of so then sand again. I was finally tired of it in the way and decided to finish.
This will be an original. Maple takes a long time to sand, the next carved piece will be magnolia, box elder or perhaps walnut. Sanding will be easier.
[/url]
