Dandan
Established Member
Well in the spirit of this recent encouragement to show more work, here is the first thing I turned.
Before Christmas I was avoiding the workshop while trying to let an elbow injury heal, but I got so desperate to get in there and do something that I decided to have a play with the cheap mini lathe that my brother had palmed off on me. My thinking was that standing still while holding a gouge would probably be alright on the elbow, which it was.
I used an unknown piece of firewood from my dad's woodpile that had mostly light wood with a dark centre that I thought might look interesting. There was a ton of rot on the outside, the original piece was probably 8 inches around and the finished sphere is under 4 inches!
The tiny lathe was awful with no torque at all, pretty much a child's toy and the set of included tools were possibly worse, but I really enjoyed the process. I only had centres or a screw plate thing to work with so I turned a shallow cup shape that I mounted on the screw plate and made another cup to sit over the tailstock centre. (I'm playing fast and loose with technical terms that I know very little about, I apologise) With 2 cups I could keep altering the orientation of the sphere, the best tip I heard was from Frank Howarth who said to just take the high points off before changing orientation, it's almost uncanny how a sphere appears! I got a LOT of catches, probably a combo of low speed, blunt tools and soft, partly rotted wood, and there is evidence of a couple of catches on the finished thing, I just couldn't bring myself to make it any smaller! In fact I took the last coupe of millimetres off with sandpaper on a block, held like a turning tool. It made a lot of dust and i'm sure is entirely frowned upon but with the tools at hand it was the best I could manage.
I finished with a bit of danish oil, it being the only thing I had to hand.
Unfortunately 2 days of living the high life in a centrally heated house caused this:
But regardless I gave it to my dad for Christmas (it was from his log pile after all) in a little box made of offcuts and he loved it. The box was designed to be broken apart for kindling but he liked that and kept it too!
The end result was far from perfect but I enjoyed making it so much that I went straight out and bought a proper Axminster lathe from a user on here!
I'm looking forward to getting some half decent tools and having some more fun!
Before Christmas I was avoiding the workshop while trying to let an elbow injury heal, but I got so desperate to get in there and do something that I decided to have a play with the cheap mini lathe that my brother had palmed off on me. My thinking was that standing still while holding a gouge would probably be alright on the elbow, which it was.
I used an unknown piece of firewood from my dad's woodpile that had mostly light wood with a dark centre that I thought might look interesting. There was a ton of rot on the outside, the original piece was probably 8 inches around and the finished sphere is under 4 inches!
The tiny lathe was awful with no torque at all, pretty much a child's toy and the set of included tools were possibly worse, but I really enjoyed the process. I only had centres or a screw plate thing to work with so I turned a shallow cup shape that I mounted on the screw plate and made another cup to sit over the tailstock centre. (I'm playing fast and loose with technical terms that I know very little about, I apologise) With 2 cups I could keep altering the orientation of the sphere, the best tip I heard was from Frank Howarth who said to just take the high points off before changing orientation, it's almost uncanny how a sphere appears! I got a LOT of catches, probably a combo of low speed, blunt tools and soft, partly rotted wood, and there is evidence of a couple of catches on the finished thing, I just couldn't bring myself to make it any smaller! In fact I took the last coupe of millimetres off with sandpaper on a block, held like a turning tool. It made a lot of dust and i'm sure is entirely frowned upon but with the tools at hand it was the best I could manage.
I finished with a bit of danish oil, it being the only thing I had to hand.
Unfortunately 2 days of living the high life in a centrally heated house caused this:
But regardless I gave it to my dad for Christmas (it was from his log pile after all) in a little box made of offcuts and he loved it. The box was designed to be broken apart for kindling but he liked that and kept it too!
The end result was far from perfect but I enjoyed making it so much that I went straight out and bought a proper Axminster lathe from a user on here!
I'm looking forward to getting some half decent tools and having some more fun!
