Woodturning - The Yarn Bowl | A bowl specifically for controlling the rolling of a ball of yarn.

What is a yarn bowl?

A yarn bowl could be called a yarn dispenser. A knitter places a ball of yarn into the bowl and feeds the loose end through the slot in the side of the bowl. When the knitter needs more loose yarn with which to knit, they pull out some slack from the end fed through slot in the side of the bowl. The shape of the bowl allows the ball to roll around inside the bowl and easily dispense yarn, but still holds the yarn ball in place so the ball doesn’t roll away.

Yarn bowls are ingenious and elegant knitting accessories. A wood yarn bowl with a deeply under cut rim like the bowl featured in this video, is also a challenge to make on a wood lathe.

This kind of woodturning is possible to do with a bowl gouge, but not without blocking nearly every shot of the bowl interior. For this video, I chose to use a hollowing tool more typically used for making vessels which allowed me to give the viewer a clearer view of the woodturning.

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