Soup bowl details

[Zach LaPerriere]

If you regularly make and/or use wood soup bowls, I'd love to hear thoughts on details that make for a better bowl.

I like quarter-sawn stock (ie. growth rings vertical) when possible, and a rim feels practical. Closed grain species without a lot of movement is a plus...and then the question of oiled or not oiled. Walnut oil is quite edible and I've used it many times...but curious on your thoughts on tung oil other natural oils like flax/linseed/Danish.

I always tell folks to make sure their bowls have been dried well before storing. A few years ago my young son stacked five bowls straight from the dish drainer and then we want on vacation vacation...and you can guess that didn't end well!

Thanks for any thoughts or resources on the well designed soup bowl.

 

[robo hippy]

Really hard dense woods are more subject to cracking if you put hot liquids in them than the softer or more medium woods. Made some tea ceremony cups out of Mountain Mahogany, which is as hard as the SW desert iron wood. They cracked with the tea water. Apple works great, so does Madrone and Myrtle/California Bay Laurel, and Big Leaf Maple. I wouldn't want to use Black Walnut because hot and wet will bring out the walnut 'flavor'..... Had an ash bowl for almost 10 years and ate every thing in it that would fit in a bowl. It eventually developed a crack from ring shake. After the initial oiling, I hardly ever put more oil in them. Oh, "No, the beet stains will not come out....."

robo hippy

 

[Don C Davis]

Zach, I will say that I saw Simon Gadoury--SG Art Turning on YouTube do a sink with an Alumalite coating and this got me to thinking of finishing some bowls with Alumalite, and it worked really well--obviously it's a glass like finish--and I have done several bowls with it and the wood hasn't moved in any way--it's like it's frozen in time when you coat it with Alumalite--I've had a lot of customers tell me that their bowls perform beautifully, and many of them are specifically soup bowls. I recommend a slow speed turning application of the resin, fortunately for me, I have a NOVA DVR XP as a secondary lathe, and it will run at 150 rpm which is slow enough that it works well for applying the Alumalite resin--I think it's worth a try--you need a couple ounces to do an 6-8" bowl.....I used clear only on the ones I've done--but I suppose you could add some dye and make a translucent colored resin also.
Here's Simon doing a sink out of wood coated with Alumalite:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVkkOwJQeLk

 

[Zach LaPerriere]

Oh, "No, the beet stains will not come out....."

Thanks for the thoughts, Robo. Very interesting on the harder woods, I would not have guessed. 10 years to develop a ring shake is something else!

Beet stains... there are even forum emoticons with the right color for that: Speaking of purple...We have a birch burl salad bowl I bought many years ago that has stained purple all the way through to the outside from years of balsamic vinegar. Purple chatoyance—which might just be what Jimi would want if he were still around.

 

[Zach LaPerriere]

Zach, I will say that I saw Simon Gadoury--SG Art Turning on YouTube do a sink with an Alumalite coating and this got me to thinking of finishing some bowls with Alumalite, and it worked really well--obviously it's a glass like finish--and I have done several bowls with it and the wood hasn't moved in any way--it's like it's frozen in time when you coat it with Alumalite--I've had a lot of customers tell me that their bowls perform beautifully, and many of them are specifically soup bowls. I recommend a slow speed turning application of the resin, fortunately for me, I have a NOVA DVR XP as a secondary lathe, and it will run at 150 rpm which is slow enough that it works well for applying the Alumalite resin--I think it's worth a try--you need a couple ounces to do an 6-8" bowl.....I used clear only on the ones I've done--but I suppose you could add some dye and make a translucent colored resin also.
Here's Simon doing a sink out of wood coated with Alumalite:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVkkOwJQeLk

Thanks Don. I wonder if Alumalite is considered food grade. I suppose that might get into the can of worms of what is considered food grade. I'm pretty sure my customer wouldn't want it in this case, but I have a customer who wants a sink. I offered to do the turning if they did the finishing, and I'll pass this video on to them.

 

[Don C Davis]

Good question Zach, I haven't delved into it, but im my humble opinion it's as safe as any plastic food ware we eat from all the time--I don't fret it a bit the I have some people who have bought bowls from me that were finished with Alumalite and eat from them. I haven't delved deep into it, but they have MSDS's listed on their product. Having said that I have people that have bought and eat from bowls I've finished with my mix of Walnut oil, Carnuba Wax, Rottenstone and Pumice--it leaves a high sheen, but nothing like the glass like finish Alumalite produces......

 

[Michael Quataert]

I'm newish to the Forum and just ran across this thread. A frequently used soup bowl that I made from cherry developed ring shakes and a crack from the rim on the opposing side. I was told it was never put in a microwave, dishwasher or oven. Maybe it was just a flawed piece of timber. An earlier comment suggests that maybe a dense hardwood is not the best choice for a soup bowl. It doesn't seem to me that cherry falls into that category, but I could be wrong. More to the point, has anyone else had a cherry soup bowl crack from use? Also, other than possible staining, would catalpa be a good choice for a soup bowl?

 

[robo hippy]

I think cherry is kind of medium dense, but out here in Oregon, we don't get much black cherry. I did have one ash bowl, one of the first I kept and 'tested' and after about 2 years, it got a crack that was for sure ring shake. After I saw the crack, the ring shake was obvious. I am much better about spotting it now. Hickory, osage, locust are pretty hard woods. Birch, soft maples, cherry are kind of medium. Maybe white oak is a bit on the harder side, as is sugar/hard maple.

robo hippy

 

[Darryl Fective]

We used to (pre-pandemic) host a big group of college students for an annual farm conference. We'd make a big pot of soup for their arrival and steel cut oats in the morning. One year we had 18 of them and we had put all of our glass and ceramic bowls in the kitchen for serving themselves breakfast. One bleary-eyed late riser went into the kitchen and plopped a pile of hot oatmeal into a walnut bowl I had turned in junior high some 40+ years earlier. I was sort of surprised, but it did just fine.