Paul Johnston – Winged Bowl:
I was heavily inspired after seeing a fellow turner’s work.
Paul’s ‘Winged Bowl’ was inspired by the work of Terry Scott
I don’t see myself as an ‘artistic’ turner, but I do admire those turners who use that media in their work. However, if I see something that takes my interest and I feel I can make what I see, I do like to attempt or, at least, have a go at it and also try to put my own twist on it, such as in this winged bowl.
The inspiration to make this wingedbowl came from seeing the great work of New Zealand woodturner, Terry Scott, in particular his Manta Ray series. This series was created some time before he published his ‘How to…’ in this magazine a while ago.
I had always wondered how he got those flowing wings the way he did, usually one up and three down. So, as soon as I knew, I just had to have a go at doing this style of bowl myself.
The tricky part for me in Terry’s process would be using the skew to cut the wing’s curves. The skew is one tool I don’t get on with so I had to do it with tools I felt comfortable with and used a 6mm and a 10mm bowl gouge with swept back wings, hence limiting a catch on the side walls as I got deeper in with the cut for the wings.
I cut in as far as I felt safe doing the wings using the two bowl gouges then knew I would have more carving to do by hand, which I didn’t mind so long as I got the winged shapes and the desired effect. I tried to do
my winged bowls slightly differently to Terry’s and, after emailing him, he agreed that I had achieved just that.
I thought my first winged bowl came out well, which is similar to this featured one, but had small pierced holes through on thinly turned wings. Terry made that first winged bowl and this featured one the front page on the American World of Woodturning forum, which pleased me knowing I must have done a decent job doing them.
