It followed me home! Can I keep it?

I am attempting to learn a new skill. Wood turning.

This is a Craigslist find. The cost was good enough. The motor and lathe chuck are worth more than I paid for it. So I wasn’t concerned about it working.

The lovely people we bought if from were ready when we arrived, s

Tuesday, I spent a few hours turning a log into a shaped spindle thing. It isn’t for anything, it is just practice.

Yes, I pulled that piece of wood out of the wood pile. Biggest issue? When I spun it up for the first time, the bark came off at speed. I wasn’t anywhere near the line of flight

I played with a bowl blank, was ok with what I was getting, decided I wanted to do something a bit better. Watched a half dozen YouTube videos.

That is my new bowl blank. It is two big, by far.

This morning, it was a fallen tree, the sort that kills kids. It was up high enough that kids will walk under it, it wasn’t stable. That is why it became a donor for the wood project.

Instead of my normal 20″ logs, I cut one thin. Or at least I thought it was thin. When I got the disk up to the shop, it turns out that it was a little to big to spin up.

The bandsaw did a good enough job cutting it down to a size I could mount.

Once mounted, I started roughing it to round. That was fun. The entire lathe was vibrating like mad. The roughing gouge peeled off chunks of wood.

It was fun watching the chips go flying. Well, until I turned around and saw that I had wood chips to the back wall, 20 feet away.

Once it was mostly round, the vibrations died out, and I started making it smooth and round. It looked like ribbons of wood flowing down a sluice gate.

The bowl like shape that I have there is smooth. I did an ok job. As they say, a grinder and paint make me the wielder I ain’t. In this case, a decorative cove and some sandpaper.

Unfortunately, it is too deep to turn unsupported. I’m going to cut part of off to make a top, then try again.

It is a learning curve. I’ll be up at the Fort at #4 on Saturday, I hope to use some of the skills I’m learning to make some spindles to repair some broken artifacts.