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Carved Bowl TemplatesA great project for beginning carvers is making a bowl. Such a project introduces carving tools, techniques, and safety practices. A good template of the design makes it easy to get started. Glue a printed design to acrylic plastic, plywood, or cardboard and trim down to the outside line to make a reusable template.
The template designs on this page are in a file format called windows metafile. This allows them to be inserted as a picture in a wide variety of software from word processors to graphics editors on Windows and Macintosh computers. They contain mathematical instructions that tell the computer how to draw the images, allowing them to be enlarged or stretched without reducing the quality of the image. I made fixed size pictures of each one and filled them with blue to make them easier to see on the web. The WMF files are unfilled black lines that conserve printer ink. Safety rules must be observed when using carving tools. Make sure the wood is held securely with a wood vise, clamps, T-Track clamps, or bench dogs. Never carve toward any part of your body. Always wear eye protection. Good carving tools available on the market include Kawasei and Dastra. The bowl pictured above was carved with Kawasei tools. If you plan to learn detailed relief carving I suggest using Dastra tools. If you want a deep bowl and need to glue pieces of wood together to achieve the depth, consider using different types of wood glued together so that color and grain changes look intentional. For example, try carving a bowl into 1/2 inch thick black walnut glued on top of 3/4 inch red oak.
This outline makes a nice three area bowl. Small holes though the template should be made at the two center marks. Trace the outside of the template and the center holes onto the wood. Then remove the template and use a drafting compass to complete the circles.
This bowl can be carved with or without the inner partition. It can also be made as two separate bowls of that fit together. Use this pattern to make a template for each side for maximum flexibility.
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