Easy Walnut Serving Dish Set From Scrap Wood

For this project, I made 4 solid walnut serving bowls.

I was given some offcuts of a giant walnut slab that my work had sitting in a trash pile. It was really nice wood, but it was dirty and sat out in the rain for a several months. I figured that with a little TLC, I could make something cool out of it and not just waste it as firewood.

I decided that making some small serving dishes would be perfect, and I wanted to test out a new technique that I saw to make a bowl, so it was a 2 for 1 deal. Read on to see how I did it, or if you'd rather watch a video I put one up on YouTube. If you like watching this kind of stuff, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe to my channel to help it grow. Follow -->HERE. Alright now on to the good stuff...

Making this project the same way I did is fairly easy. All you need is some wood, a table saw, and a miter saw.

I used the (formerly) "trash" wood that I had, but you could just as easily glue up some thinner wood into a thicker piece to get a similar size. After measuring the offcut that I had, it was just slightly over 5" wide, so that dictated the size of my blocks/bowls.

I wanted to make the final shape symmetrical, so I started with a block slightly over 5" x 5" x ~3" thick. I ended up cutting 6 blocks and ended up keeping 2 blanks for future projects. The last photo above in this section showed what the outside of the wood looked like as compared to 3 inside sections of the inside. The crazy beautiful grain pattern was hidden inside the ugly exterior. I'm really glad I didn't just burn it!

After I figured out that the size of my wood blocks, I decided to use AutoCAD to make a 3d model of the final shape to give me some direction. The image shows the basic shape and features of my design. Doing a 3d model like this or sketching things out before you start cutting usually helps streamline the process and hopefully helps you catch any potential issues. When you just wing it and start designing as you go, you might do something in the moment that has a negative effect on something down the line. I've made my share of mistakes, so now I try to avoid them when I can.

The idea behind the miter saw bowl process is to use the curve of the blade to hollow out the inside of the bowl. Your wood block will sit centered under the center of the miter saw blade. Once you make one cut, you just rotate the bowl slightly and make another cut, then you keep going to make many more cuts to get rid of most of the inside material. To do this accurately, you need to make a jig to sit on the miter saw and keep your block in place. In the next section, I'll show you how I did it.

(JIG = a device that holds a piece of work and guides the tools operating on it.)

NOTE: My saw had a 10" blade on it as standard, but the radius was too big to cut the curve and depth I wanted. I planned on using a 5-1/2" blade instead from my Circular saw. This seemed to fit perfectly for what I wanted for the size of my block. Unfortunately, the 5-1/2" blade didn't fit onto my miter saw since the center hole was too small. Luckily I had a 6-1/2" blade that would fit on it (the red one you see in the next pictures). It didn't cut quite as deep, but it still worked out ok.

For the Miter Saw bowl technique, you need to make a bottom board that can be clamped onto the miter saw. I used a scrap piece of 1/4" white melamine I had laying around. It needs to be deep enough for your wood block to be able to spin around a center point without hitting the back wall of the miter saw. It also needs to be wide enough to be able to clamp it down to the miter saw so that it doesn't move once you have it all aligned for cutting.

Measure out a place on the base board where your block can spin around 360 degrees without hitting the back and where the pivot point will also align with your miter saw blade. Put a nail or something similar through the bottom and then have it align with a small hole on the center of the block you are going to carve out. (I used a roofing nail because that was the shortest one I had on hand.)

Next, I cut my blocks down to be the final size at 5" x 5" x 2" thick. I squared them up and sanded the bottoms as flat as I could. For the wood blocks to spin smoothly and be cut smoothly, the bottoms need to be flat. Otherwise it will rock slightly on that pivot point and can lead to an uneven cut. Once the pieces are at their final size, mark their center point and drill the small hole into the bottom for the nail to fit into (Only drill as deep as you need to. Don't go all the way through). It needs to fit fairly tight without wiggling, but be loose enough to spin around easily.

To cut the inside of the bowl, figure out how far the miter saw blade needs to go down and use the depth stop on your saw to prevent it from cutting all the way through. Make sure it stops above the point where your nail will be. You don't want the saw blade to hit the metal.

Next, align the bottom center of the blade to be a little bit above the top point of the nail, and secure the jig into place with clamps or other means. (We don't want it to move once we start cutting.)

Once your block is on the pivot point, put on your safety goggle and a dusk mask (it creates a lot of dust) and cut into the block. Rotate the block slightly and make another cut. Do this over and over again until you clear out most of the center area. At this point it will be pretty rough on the interior, but the way to fix it is to hold the blade all the way down to the lowest point and slowly rotate your block to smooth everything out. (The video shows this process better than a picture, if you can't visualize it.)

After cutting the center section out, your bowl should look like this... if it's not perfectly smooth, you can sand it down a bit more by hand. The goal is to do as little sanding as possible though...so yeah... do what you want. Now onto making the outside of the bowl look good.

Now that the inside shape is done, the flat, square sides look a little boring. To make it look better, I ended up adding a 1/4" chamfer (45 degree angle) cut along the top edge with my table saw. (You could also use a router to cut the chamfer if you have one.)

Next I decided to cut an angle off the bottom of the bowl to help the top edge have a smaller profile and just look a little nicer. I used a digital angle finder to get the 60 degree angle that I wanted for the blade. Then I flipped the block over so that the top of the bowl was facing down and cut the angle along each edge.

For the final detail, the bowl just needed a little something more as an accent. I decided that a simple dado (groove) cut into the upper edge would look good. To do this, I just used the 1/8" width of the table saw blade to cut an 1/8" wide x 1/8" deep cut along the whole outside edge as the picture shows.

Once you have the shape of the bowl looking how you want, do a final sanding to as smooth out any rough edges, and then apply finish. If you're going to use the bowl for keys or something non-food related, you can paint or stain the wood, or just add a clear coat onto it. In my case, I wanted to use them as food serving dishes, so I used a food safe finish. The one I had on hand was a food-safe mineral oil that I use on my cutting board. Follow the directions on whatever product you use for proper use. Let the finish dry and then your bowl is ready for use.

These bowls would be perfect to hold your keys, all the sides for a meal this holiday season, candy, or for everyday stuff like Taco sides. What would you use them for?

This Instructable is to give you ideas on how to actually make it and show the process. If you make one, I'd love to see it. You can tag me on Social Media on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I'd also appreciate a follow on any of those platforms. I recently started a YouTube channel showing the process of making all sorts of creative things if you want to check that out. Follow along and see all the other amazing ideas I have in the works.

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