I get that question a lot. If the person is asking how long it takes me to make to a Santa, the answer is simple enough: depending on the level of detail, between fifty and sixty hours. But if he is asking about a bowl, then the answer is more complicated.
Step 1: Get the Wood
First I need to get the wood. On occasion, I purchase a piece of wood that is already seasoned. But usually, someone tells me that a tree is being cut down and that I should come get some of the wood. So I take my chainsaw and go cut up what I can accommodate in my shop at the time. That can be an afternoon of work.
Step 2: Preserve the Wood
When I get home, I cut the larger pieces up and then seal both ends on all the pieces. If I don’t seal the ends, the wood will probably crack as it dries and become unusable for turning. This all takes another few hours.
I stack the pieces and leave them to season. It takes a year or more for the wood to season. I check on the progress from time to time. I do sometimes rough-turn a bowl. That means I turn a piece of wood into a thick-walled bowl shape and then put it into a bag of shavings to finish seasoning. So more hours spent.
Step 3: Turn the Wood
Eventually, the time comes to turn. If I have rough-turned a bowl, I take that out and put it on the lathe. If I use a piece that was sealed, I first have to cut it on the bandsaw into what carvers call a blank, a three-to-six-inch-thick disk. Then I put the blank on the lathe.
Bowl blanks waiting their turns
The actual turning can take from less than an hour to several hours, depending on the size of the piece and the intricacy of design. Then I sand the bowl with five different grits of sandpaper until it is smooth to my satisfaction. More hours have thus gone by.
Starting lathe work on a bowl blank
Step 4: Polish the Wood
Finally, I polish the bowl, first with linseed oil and then with beeswax, until it glows. And then, after however long that took, I call the bowl finished. (My wife will probably call it something else–See https://thelindenwoodstudio.com/naming-things/ for example.)
That satisfying glow
So, to answer “How long does it take to make a bowl?”: usually more than a year, with several intervals of work. But that’s one of the reasons a handmade bowl is special.
