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Quilted Poplar Maple Leaf Bowl

M

Maggie Shapiro

Joined
Dec 4, 2024
Messages
101
Likes
843
Location
Santa Fe, NM
Website
www.ridethebevelturning.com
Final piece:
Quilted poplar maple leaf bowl front.jpg


Lesson #1: Do not use a super hardwood like ash! I carved this for a few days before my aching hands gave up in protest and I had to seek out a softer wood...hence the quilted poplar!
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I used the maple leaf stencils from Power Carving Depot for this piece
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I don't have a photo (only a video) of the roughed out bowl I started with, but this pic shows you that I left it approx 1"-1.5" thick so that I could have room to layer the leaves
 

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This is the bowl mostly roughed out, with the leaves shaped a bit but still with some thickness to it. I lost one of the leaves because I made the connections too narrow (you can see a leaf along the top left rim with 3 exclamation marks!!! to warn me!). I removed the wood in the negative space using a drill bit and the some of the coarse Dremel burs. I recommend Kutzall - they have several kits that feature multiple burs and I ended up using many of them. For future pieces I'll probably invest in a handheld mini saw or maybe a scroll saw to remove these areas because this was the most time-consuming part of the project.
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I had a bark inclusion that came out very quickly with the burs so I had to do some inlay on the top and bottom of the bowl. Eventually I got the leaves to the thickness I liked and started drawing the veins on the top and underside of the leaves. I was really worried this would be near impossible but it turned out to be much easier than I thought. One thing I'd definitely do differently next time is to make a shallower vein on the top of the leaf - these were a tad too deep and sharp and I ended up having to use another Kutzall bur to smooth the edges followed by sandpaper to really smooth everything out so that the veins flowed into the leaf better.
 

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To achieve the lifelike leaves, I thinned them out around the edges. I didn't want to go too thin in the center because a lot of the leaves were wavy and I was worried I'd pierce them...(which I did to one of them but I carved out the holes). I also sanded lightly around the edges so that they weren't so sharp and pointy.
 
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