Jim Sannerud – The Wooden
Bowl
Saturday March 29th,
2014 from 9:30am to 4pm
The Zumbro
Valley Woodturners were proud to host Jim Sannerud’s “The Wooden Bowl” class in an all-day education
session at the New Haven Town Hall.
Jim is
an accomplished professional wood turner and carver with an award-winning style
that flows from his interpretation of Nordic folk-art and functional
objects. Most of his works are
utilitarian in nature, turned ‘green’ and finished all in one session on the
lathe with some degree of carving and painting on them using multi-colored
burnished milk paint method.
We covered a lot of ground in this one-day session!
Morning half of the
session – From a Log to a finished Turning
The
morning started outdoors with Jim discussing his approach to harvesting trees
for his bowl blanks. Although Jim’s
favorite sources of wood are the birch trees from the far north in the Grand
Marais, Minnesota area he does turn quite a bit of local timber also. In all cases the trees Jim uses were
harvested for other reasons.
Considering
the log and the best way to cut it into the basic bowl blanks touched on many
topics: balanced grain, bark inclusions, internal stress based on how the tree
was growing, etc. Some clues used to
make the decision on how to cut the log were in the bark, others were in the
end grain and others were based on experience with the species of wood.
Jim’s
review of chainsaw safety covered the protective clothing, ear protection, eye
protection and head protection as well as the proper maintenance and use of the
chainsaw itself.
Before
instructing us in the techniques he uses when turning a piece Jim critiqued
several completed objects from a number of turners. In turning the bowl all in one session from
the green blank to the finished piece all aspects of the design had to be
considered before the shavings began to fly.
The
eight attendees turning that day each had a blank (or two) of birch supplied by
Jim. They mounted their blank on a screw
chuck and attempted to produce a final turning representative of one of the
pieces passed around that morning. The
grinder was a popular place too as people touched-up the edge of their tools
before making their finishing cuts.
Afternoon half of the
session
Although
Jim covered the carving of the finished turning in the morning session most
attendees did not get a chance to carve on their own turning until after
lunch. Jim’s style is a modern
adaptation of the look of many Nordic folk pieces. He uses faceting and incising as well as
abstract and stylized folk forms in his work
In the
photo on the left below Jim has reversed the demonstration bowl to hold it
firmly in a jam chuck while carving. Jim
provided these simple wedge jam chucks for the club turners to use. In production Jim uses a bowl-horse to carve
on many of his bowls as seen in the photo on the right from David Fisher’s website where a
YouTube link and construction plans can be found.
I
don’t think any of us brought as many carving tools with us as Jim did and some
of these specialized tools are unique to carving on bowls. On the right is the final product by ZVW club
member Cheryl Jones.
As in
all topics Jim took us through the history of the aspect of the piece we were
about to do as well as the unique aspects related to achieving the desired
result. Working with milk paints and
getting on the learning curve related to the various colors and finish
treatments proved to be a very rich topic as well. The crowd participating in the carving and
painting half of the day was very large.
Our
bowls needed to dry down for a week or two before we could paint them so all
experimentation with the milk paints was done on lumber scraps. Jim uses walnut oil to coat the interior of
his bowls, again a very utilitarian and traditional approach.
Comments
on this class made by attendees were all along the lines of it being very
informative and inspiring and that Jim’s presentation was very professional and
personable… a great time was had by all in other words!
About Jim
Popular
Woodworking Article on Jim
Class Announcement Posted to the ZVW
web site earlier
More than wooden bowls - For
those of you interested in the “shrink boxes” mentioned during class see the
American Woodturner magazine’s February, 2012 issue
for an article on Jim’s technique called “Shrink
Boxes – Scandinavian Heritage in Minnesota”.
Photo of a shrink-box on the
left is from Jim’s website. The photo on
the right of the hook-tools Jim uses to turn the inside of these boxes came
from a web post by Jim where he was explaining the process to a fellow turner.
