Many years ago, when I first stuck a toe into the "vortex", on a funky old lathe and with a Harbor Freight tool set, there was no forum like this...no internet, and for me, no mentor or club. As you might suspect, I did many things "wrongly". Drying rough turned bowls was no exception and I started a collection of excessively warped (reject) bowls.

In my naivete, I reckoned that if a round wet one would go oval in drying, an oval dry one would go round in soaking, and I soaked a few. Yep.  They would go round again!  Some of those allowed me to re-turn to a thin wall and the warpage on the second go round was not as bad.

The next step was a natural progression.  If I would glue a rim of a different wood to the re-wetted and re-turned bowl,  the tendency to warp was resisted by the differing grain of the glued up, added rim.

Someone, somewhere, sometime, might give rehydrating a try instead of delegating a reject to the burn pile.  Not much to lose, right?  And, there is an article in the latest issue of The American Woodturner that features added rims of contrasting colors that reminded me of what I was doing so long ago...when I didn't know better.

I guess I had never thought about soaking a bowl in water. I always leave the walls rather thick (3/4" for 10" bowl or smaller and 1" to 1 1/2" for larger bowls) so they can be re-turned with no trouble. I have never had one that I could make round after drying. I have did a few bowls with a glued on rim but have always made sure the grains match or your glue joint won't hold for long. The article also stresses that you match the grains.

mike jones wrote on 04/18/12 at 16:26:32:



A lot of them find their pieces falling a part after a few years if they didn't take into account grain direction.