Making a bowl using fire

[Stevie777]

Anyone Ever tried to use the blowing ember technique in making a bowl....I dont have the tools needed to make a bowl, but i was wondering if i could start the bowl with a knife or even a drill then thrown on some embers and blow, letting the embers and resulting heat do most of the work.?

Obviously i would still need a knife to scrape away the charred wood inside the bowl.

I guess i'm asking has anyone ever tried this technique and how successful was it..I'm sure i saw someone make a Canoe like this..?

 

[tmt77]

I had a go at making a couple of bowls like this a couple of years ago. It works well, if you use some sort of straw to blow through you can be surprisingly accurate in burning away the wood you want.

Only downside is the process is very slow, and only so be done in old clothes! burnt a couple of pretty impressive cinder holes in my trousers while concentrating on the bowl.

 

[Stevie777]

Yeah, Thought it might take a while hence the drill first idea...I can get my hands on some pretty impressive Burls, but from experience these appear even harder than wood if you know what i mean.

 

[Robson Valley]

I'd like to try that burning technique as well. Trying to find very dry wood that isn't cracked is practically impossible here in the PacNW.
Stevie777 points out an option to use burl = the tangled grain makes carving a nightmare but burning would be a good idea.

I read someplace of dugout canoes made by burning. The core of a wet log would be difficult to burn.
Here's how some large canoes are made, some are open ocean boats as much as 60' in length.

http://www.donsmaps.com/canoesnwc.html

 

[crosslandkelly]

Wow, great article on the canoes.
Not bowls, but I've made a couple of spoons using a coal.

 

[Robson Valley]

Maybe I could get the fire going with one of those propane bottle torches (outdoors) just as a proof-of-concept?

What makes the Haida-style western red cedar canoes so unique is the difficulty in finding a sound log to carve in one piece.
But maybe they are more common in the coastal rain forest. Here, I don't think that I've seen one sound log in 100 over the past 15 years.
WRC as young as 20 has core rot. Trees seem happy to grow like that = 12" thick shells are even rare.

Just west of me on the Nechako plateau, the Lheidli T'enneh made river canoes from big cottonwood logs (Populus trichocarpa).
I studied one just a few years ago but couldn't tell beyond the tool marks how it had been hollowed out (I can spell chainsaw.)
The beaver are ambitious enough to drop the odd one so there's your boat-log, just burn it to length.
Maybe in the next 2 weeks, I'll get some short pieces 24" x 24 - 36" to carve feast bowls.

 

[Toddy]

I have a beautiful one that Russ made for me (warthog1981) and a couple burnt out but not scraped clean that were made as part of a living history series of events.

There's a knack to keeping the wood charring/glowing and not burning through, but it's very do-able. I found it easier to have a fire burning and change out the embers from that with the ones in the bowl. Pair of old fire tongs (or bbq ones) and something round ended and sharp to scrape with.

If you just want to try it as a concept, use embers but keep a blow torch handy. It roasts them back into flame and fires the surface very tidily

M

 

[mrcharly]

The beaver are ambitious enough to drop the odd one so there's your boat-log, just burn it to length.
.

Train the beavers?

Now if there was something that was akin to catnip but for beavers, you could just rub it on the wood you wanted removing.

 

[Stevie777]

Cheers for the tips guys. I'm gonna take a Burl along with me on my next camping trip to keep me entertained in a few months. Lets see what i can come up with.

I'll check that link to the Canoes later..Thanks.

 

[Robson Valley]

Just imagine the project as a Neolithic puzzle: "How would it be done?"

Beaver almost qualify as forest vandals. Aside from the extensive tree cutting (more/different light on the ground,) they flood and kill patches of forest
and destroy moving water ecosystems to create bug-infested ponds and swamps.

In the mountains they are quite happy to use the highway as a nearly completed pond dam. All but the water flow culverts under the road.
So they plug those. As the water level rises, the highway road bed becomes water saturated against the bedrock base (not designed for that). Lubricated, stretches
of the highway slop off down the mountain side.

Plenty of time to contemplate the gap and get on with the bowl-burning!

 

[John Fenna]

All I ever made this way was a couple of spoons - and even that was a long job!

 

[Stevie777]

All I ever made this way was a couple of spoons - and even that was a long job!

I've got 2 weeks, on a beach, all alone coming up..Ha..Maybe i could find a way of letting the Sea breeze do most of the blowing.