Turning Bud Vases
Bud vases are little vases meant for a single flower or a small, simple flower arrangement. They typically have a small opening at the top, which helps support whatever you choose to put in them. Generally, they are inexpensive and exceptionally versatile.
They range from very simple to elegant, but always small. On one end of the scale, you might take a small section of a branch, drill a hole in the top, and call it a bud vase, or something very complex and refined on the other end.
As a woodturning artist, this gives me a wide range of expression and latitude for practicing techniques. It doesn’t cost me very much for wood because of the vases' small size. They’re also popular as gifts. I find them to be a great project to make me a better woodturner.
Practicing Using the Gouge
The collection in this article was designed specifically to focus on practicing using the gouge. All the details turned on these five bud vases were all turned using the gouge. The only turning I did with another chisel in their making was when I used the parting tool to separate the finished bud vase from the excess stock. In the future, I intend to do another set of five to practice using the skew in the same manner.
In this article, I hope to inspire you to turn bud vases. Explore your artistic side.
Tools and Equipment
- Wood lathe
- Wood lathe chuck
- Jacob’s chuck or a 3/8-inch drill bit mounted in a handle
- 3/8-inch drill bit
- Turning gouges and a parting tool
- Sandpaper
Important Term Before You Start
"Riding the bevel" is a term woodturners will use over and over. We all know what it means. If you want to get into woodturning, it's important to know and practice. So what is the bevel, and how do you ride it?
The bevel is the part of the chisel that angles up to the cutting edge. When sharpening a chisel, the bevel is the part where you grind material away to make the cutting edge sharp.
Riding the bevel is where you place the bevel of the tool flat against the rotating workpiece. Tilting the tool toward the cutting edge slightly will cause the tool to begin cutting. In this position, the bevel part of the tool is just skimming the freshly cut surface of the wood. This will give a cleaner cut with less chance of digging uncontrolled into the wood and possibly ruining your work.
Preparing the Blank
- Mount your piece of wood between centers and turn it round. All the bud vases in this article were turned from branches of Grey Alder or Grey Birch. These are easy for me to get. They are also very resistant to cracking, as they dry without a lot of special effort. You could start with a chunk or block of wood.
- If needed, square up the ends and turn a tenon for the lathe chuck to hold on to.
- Mount your work in your wood lathe chuck on the headstock, and a 3/8-inch drill bit into your Jacobs chuck mounted in the tailstock. Drill your hole to the desired depth. If you don't have a Jacobs chuck, this hole could be made with the drill bit mounted in a handle.
After this, the work can be all your imagination. The five bud vases in this article were all created at the lathe. I just went with whatever I thought would look nice with the wood I was working with.
Bud Vase #1
As soon as I turned the blank for this round, I could see spectacular spalting. For me, that means that I have to keep the turning simple for two reasons. The wood might be punky and not hold detail very well, and Mother Nature is a better artist than I am. The idea was to highlight what was there, not distract from it.
Long gentle curves are an easy place to start practicing using your turning gouges. Nothing about this shape is difficult. Practicing the long concave and convex curves is a great place to start.
Hollowing out the flared mouth of the vase is the only hollowing work needed on this bud vase. I used a small gouge and used pull cuts to transition from the 3/8 inch hole to the wider mouth. I chose to cut a forty-five-degree bevel on the rim because I thought it would look good.
Once I was satisfied with the shape, I sanded it to 240 grit and parted it off from the waste with a parting tool. I sanded the bottom smooth, signed and dated it, and then finished it with polyurethane.
Bud Vase #2
Inside ninety-degree turns are worth practicing with the gouge, which is why I chose this particular bud vase as my second project. The round base uses this kind of inside angle to transition into the neck and then again to transition from the neck into the rounded lip around the mouth.
To make this cut, you have to twist the tool outward almost onto its side, rolling into the cut. This allows you to get the nose of the tool cleanly into the corner you're cutting. If your spindle gouge is properly ground, you should be able to cut the turn even sharper than ninety degrees. It's important to learn how to do this and get good at it because the technique will allow you to make even more interesting cuts with your gouge in the future.
The mouth of this vase is simpler than Bud Vase #1 in that the corners are just rounded instead of hollowed out. The parting off, sanding, and finishing operations were just a repeat of the previous vase.
Bud Vase #3
This bud vase was inspired by a genie bottle. There are no new techniques explored that weren't already covered in my first two examples. I made the mouth to remind people of a wine bottle. The inside angle on the base is a carryover from the previous example as well.
Part of me hates making the same thing over and over again. I hope this illustrates the use of my imagination. If you choose to make bud vases after reading this article, I hope that you at least try to turn your own artistry loose.
Bud Vase #4
Making beads is an element that you can make on your projects. This bud vase introduces that to define the base. If I'm making a simple bead like this example, I'll use either a gouge or a skew depending on which one I have in my hands at the time. If the project I'm working on has a lot of them, I will pick up a skew instead because I find it easier to make them consistently the same size with that tool.
The other element in this bud vase that interests me is the angled base. That angle continues an imaginary line that matches the outside diameter of the flared mouth. I like how it visually ties the whole thing together.
Bud Vase #5
I'm not sure what I was thinking when I came up with this design. The wood came from the same spalted branch as Bud Vase #3, and it ended up chipping out a little, so I didn't end up with exactly what I wanted. This is the beauty of improvising your design as you go. The base ended up more rounded toward the bead on the bottom, but I still ended up with a very attractive piece.
The challenging element was making a bead to transition from the body of the vase into the neck.
Practice Makes Perfect
There are lots of small projects that you can make to practice your turning. Bud vases are one of my favorites. I could come up with five completely new models in an afternoon. If interest is high, I will try to produce another article with five models designed for practicing using the skew in fairly short order. It'll take me longer to make the article and the video than it will to make and finish all five new vases.
I hope this article will inspire you to come up with your designs. I'd love to see what others do with this.
If you would like to see the contents of this article on YouTube, watch the video below. Some people do better if they see the work in action. This video will cover everything covered in this article.
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