Wood Turning on a Lathe

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by woodworking and certainly turning wood on a lathe.  I’ve used a metal lathe a fair bit over the years but not wood.  That has now changed!

Thanks to a friend who gave me an older 12″ Craftsman wood lathe, I’ve finally started playing with spinning wood.

This is the lathe after getting it setup. Yep, it’s fairly old but it’ll get me started.

The learning curve is always fairly steep for this type of thing and it certainly was for me. Nonetheless; I managed to avoid doing any damage to my equipment or drawing too much blood.

When most of us think of ‘wood turning’ we think of round table or chair legs – or spindle turning. I’m less interested in that and more interested in things like bowls, small planters, and such (end grain turning).  There are hundreds or thousands of variations – I’m just starting simple with some fairly soft and inexpensive wood.

This is going to be a top – one of the spinny thingies!

Eventually deciding to try a small bowl.

And then turned (pun intended) to a Pecan tree that recently died in my yard – and I harvested it for this purpose.

This is a little cup with a lid.

All of these pieces are an attempt to learn some new skill, tool, or trick.

All of this is loads of fun – even when the item doesn’t turn out.  A lot more to come on this topic!!