Crazyal, I've turned a lot of bowls, 20" diameter on down, from wood I've cut. Cherry, black walnut, ambrosia maple, tulip poplar, etc. It's very rewarding, but there's a whole lot to it. And as 4570Man says, the lathe and the bandsaw are just the beginning. If you're like most of my turning friends, you'll discover that no matter how many turning tools you have, you're always just one more tool away from excellence. They don't call it "The Vortex" for nothing. :laughing:
Best advice I can give is to find a local woodturning club and attend their next meeting. The AAW website has a list of local chapters,
American Association of Woodturners. I rarely meet a woodturner who's not happy to share experience and advice. Since you want to turn bowls, you'll be working with big, heavy material. A moderately large green bowl blank can easily go 30 to 50 lbs when you mount it on the lathe, even after trimming it reasonably round for balance.
Take your time choosing a lathe and your first gouges and scrapers. You can go
really wrong buying without informed help from experienced turners. There's an awful lot of "wudda, cudda, shudda" regret out there. For a bowl lathe, you want something with at least 1-1/2 hp, and capable of a minimum spindle speed of 100 rpm. There are some very nice Asian-made lathes available now (even the Powermatics are now all made in Asia). If you limit yourself to bowl blanks under 12"
and pre-balance them carefully, you
can get away with 300 rpm. But it's dangerous, and won't be much fun when the lathe starts bucking and walking on you.
For a bandsaw, a 14" saw with a 6" riser and a one hp motor will work, but you'll need a special blade (e.g., 3/8" skip tooth 3 to 4 TPI), and will have to be very careful and slow. Green half-rounds are brutal on a small bandsaw. Here again, folks at a local woodturning club can be enormously helpful. I bet there are bowl turners near you who'd be happy to invite you to their shops and let you see what's involved first hand. Even let you try out their equipment.