Picked up about 4 feet of maple this morning from Home Depot.  Good thing its literally next door.  I was only able to find a 5 1/2 inch width board of maple cut to 4 foot of length.  So these will be on the smaller side of bowls I'm normally used to doing how ever. I've got several Christmas gifts I've got to make  before December.  Time is going to be going by quite quickly.  I can't really run power tools until after 8 am in the morning here in the park.  Its just a common courtesy thing.  So 8 am rolled around and I got the board cut up.  I was able to get about 8 pieces of 5 1/2 so I did a 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 3 inch blank.  Got it glued up.  I have just enough for two bowls fortunately.  Only thing I don't like about gluing up blanks is the fact that they like to slide around due to the amount of glue that is put on.

36 minutes ago, AndrewB said:

Only thing I don't like about gluing up blanks is the fact that they like to slide around due to the amount of glue that is put on.

I've read where a dot of CA placed centered on the pieces and then spread the wood glue around it. The CA fastens instantly and keeps the pieces from moving while the wood glue sets

I'll have to give that a try on the next blank glue up.  I just worry about not having enough time to get the pieces lined up properly.

Glue 2, wait, glue next one, wait, etc

A few grains of sand will limit the sliding . Or you can put screws in  corners if not making square bowl.

I would have never thought of sand.  I don't have any on hand at the moment I have a 50 pound bag of clay though.

Salt works too 

Either way the first one glued up pretty good the second one is glued up and drying at the moment.  I've got a good start on the first maple bowl. 

Edited September 24, 20205 yr by AndrewB

The only downside to hand sanding is its taking for ever to get the tooling marks out such a pain.  This bowl decided it wanted to be wobbly.

Do you have a picture of your inertia sander?

Yea I took this off the woodcraft website but this is the one that I have.  The working end has a different head on it than that so I'll take a better picture when I go back outside.

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by AndrewB

Either way I think it semi worked for me in the long run.  I was able to get most of the heavy duty tool marks out of the bowl for an extremely nice finish.  Even if it is just mineral oil it turned out nicely.  Ah yea I included a photo of the inertia sander as well.

I was hoping your sander had a removable disc/pad/arbor. I was thinking you might be able to use it in a drill 

 

I tried the drill method with a different type of head but that's where I ran into the problems of keeping the sanding disc stable to the wood so it wouldn't go nuts.  It just wasn't very feasable for me.  I may give it another try when I'm not trying to make christmas gifts for people.  But I probably need to invest in an angled drill before that happens.

Well after having a huge hiccup with the Wen bench top lathe variable speed controls dying on me I swapped out lathes to my harbor freight lathe it only slows to about 600 rpm and wont go slower than that unfortunately... So I'll have to work around it.  But I was able to get the second maple bowl all sanded up and a coat of finish on it.  So it's working out for me okay.  I'll still have to see how well it handles when I get a blank on it.  But the maple bowls are turning out quite nicely. 

Edited September 26, 20205 yr by AndrewB

Both of the maple bowls are finished they turned out quite well.  Just gotta finish up with the video editing then I will post that as well.  Either way they turned out really well.

Edited September 27, 20205 yr by AndrewB

Looking good. When sanding with drill using 2 inch pads you will not make full contact with the pad since bowls are curved. Inside there are spots that just have to be hand sanded even when using he 2 inch, mostly at the bottom of the curve . You can also get 1 inch mandrels and pads. sometimes any sanding method is a compromise and you must use more than one method on a shape you have turned