First Bowl

Now that I'm caught up on current orders, I thought I'd play around a little and try making a bowl on the lathe. A friend of mine picked up a few bowl blanks for me a couple weeks ago, so I grabbed the piece of Sapele and started it up.

I got the bowl to the point where I would be satisfied with it simply being my first bowl... then decided that I would take one more pass with the scraper to clean up this little ridge that was on the inside lip.

the rest is history.





yup that's right, it broke right off.

I'm not throwing it into the firewood pile though... I'll keep it as a humbling reminder.
Right now it's down in the dungeon waiting for the glue to dry the bottom back on.

New Toy

looks like I was a good boy this year after all!!

since it was to heavy for my wife to move on her own, it wasn't left under the tree... instead we took a walk out to the mini-van so I could open this present!



I've got it set up and turned it on as a test, but I haven't run anything through it yet. I should be getting to that in a couple days.

Looks Nice...Smells Horrible!

A freind asked if I could turn a couple Acrylic pens for him. Considering he has just trekked across the state (ok, it's New Hampshire and that's really only an hour and a half drive, but still...) to pick up some pen kits so I can complete an order this week, who am I to say no!?!

He wanted one to give as a gift, and the other is for his wife (and she's making me some Ginger Bread cookies, so I really do make out well on this deal!!).

I think the pens came out looking pretty nice, but man-0h-man do these things stink when cutting and drilling!!

Here's what they look like:
This is the gift pen. It's got a blue and white acrylic blank with a platinum kit.


This is the pen for Mary (the Ginger Bread making wife!). Her's is this wild pink and gold acrylic blank with a 24kt gold kit.


this is a red white and blue blank that I received in compensation for an order mix-up a few weeks back. I did want to experiment on pens that were intended as gifts, so I did a test run on this one.


and finally a group shot.