One bright and sunny day I was making a bowl with a center piece. The inside came out good and I turn the bowl over and started turning the outside.
The Story of the Flying Bowl
One bright and sunny day I was making a bowl with a centerpiece. The inside came out good and I turn the bowl over and started turning the outside.
My neighbor was working on his beautiful green ¼ Indy-style race car that he took to the track in College Station and competed. He’s a car guy as I’m a wood guy. While turning, the bowl support lost its grip and the project flew off the lath and with a loud BANG; hit the back wall of the garage with a CRASH ricocheted and BAMB into some other things and ROLLED down the driveway. Rusty, hearing all of this came over half expecting to see me out cold on the floor. Somehow my body was not part of the action. We joked about what happened and went back to our garages to play with our weekend toys.
At a much slower speed, I continued turning and after a while, the piece came off the lath again but with much less drama. Rusty came over again and said something like “Well, I see that you’re still working on that flying bowl.” I thought to myself “A Flying Bowl, that name has some sticking power.”
I finally had the outside turned and despite the little missteps, it looked okay. There were some chips and dings in the work so just for fun, I took it to the band saw and cut it in half and glued it back together and it looked really unique.
That is the story of The Flying Bowl, almost.
This shows the steps. I am working on a handbook on making the Flying Bowl. I made some for the club members for a demo so it will be about 15 pages.
The Story of the Flying Bowl
I had taken it to the Wood Working Club of Houston for show and tell. It was then displayed at the Cutting Edge and then shown at the Gulf Coast Wood Turners club and then as part of a display at the Craft Museum at 4848 Main. At all of these showings one constant comment was that nobody had ever seen anything like it before, except for one old turner, he says that he saw something like it years ago. I and others have looked all over the World Wide Web and have yet to see this design.
Naturally the guys also wanted the plans to make one. That’s how guys are. We won’t follow directions but we can’t do anything without a plan. When I was drawing the plans something interesting, mysterious or just odd was happening. It was mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, fluid shapes and maybe an ancient mystery of a perfect shape.
The opening of the bowl is a figure ‘8’ shape. In mathematics’ that is a symbol for infinity. That same symbol is a sign of good fortune, prosperity and other positive things in many ancient civilizations. Often when these ancient societies discovered an interesting concept, it was known to only the most powerful of people and only a shadow of it became known to others and sometimes these shapes went into darker areas. The best know is the Pentagon. It is a perfect shape like a circle into a ball, a square to a cube and a triangle to a pyramid, the Pentagon becomes a geodesic dome. Intersect the points of a Pentagon and there is a five point star. The figure ‘8’ was only the first of many surprises to come.
With just one dimension, say 12” for the diameter divided by the first three prime numbers (1, 2, & 3) the base pattern is set. Then take the first number that can be squared (4) to get the internal radius. That gets the wall and center thicknesses. Using some simple math, numbers found from a 12” diameter start is 1”, 2”, 3”, 4”, 5” and 6”. The ‘S-curve’ uses the Pythagorean Theorem. Then there is Fibonacci Theorem (used as a base for many architectural designs) also known as the Golden Ratio when view from the side.
There is a beautiful spiral of nature or a Nautilus shell shows really well with the Cube Flying Bowl. It is hidden in the others but still there. There were more math surprises. Looking straight down at it, it has the same shape as iron fillings over a bar magnet. As I look, there is more to be found.
All of this I found to be a bit more that a mere coincidence. Could this be some sort of sacred vessel of some ancient secret society kept hidden for eons? Is this a shadow that has taken shape form another dimension or just imagination? I don’t know, but it is interesting.
This is how it started, the dark line in the middle is a filled cut line.
They had 2 vans and all sorts of stuff.
The HGTV film crew and me.
Filming in the Toy Box.
Getting advice from Chris.
