A bit of background is in order, I believe. And yes, I know most of you who know me are probably groaning right now, fully aware that this will end up being a entry of epic length.
I have only just recently returned to the shop after an extended absence. Being the way that I am, I fully believed that I could just jump back into woodworking and be able to work at the same level I had two years ago, such as it may have been. Well, I was mistaken. It started innocently enough... I was trying to build coin banks using old post office box doors. Seemed easy enough, but I decided that I needed a decent belt sander to do the job right as no matter how I try, I can never get my joints to line up perfectly. I figured a belt sander would help me clean up dovetails without rounding things over as I tend to do with my orbital sander.
Of course, there's only one place that I usually go for a tool of that sort...Woodcraft, of course!
Long story not-so-long, I picked up my sander on Veteran's Day. Woodcraft does this neat thing every year where they encourage folks who are handy with a lathe and gouges to turn pens to send to the troops. If you happen to wander in on Veteran's Day, they'll even hook you up with a pen kit, the blank and let you use their lathes and tools to turn a pen in the store. If you've never turned anything on the lathe before they'll walk you through it and give pointers.
Now, I had turned some small bowls on the lathe, a couple of tops, and generally made square pieces of wood into smaller roundish pieces of wood, but had never turned a pen. It looked simple enough, but I decided to watch for a bit to see how the pros did it. I finally worked up the courage to give it a shot and was almost immediately hooked. Of course, after reading a couple books on turning pens and looking at some examples of what the finished product should look like, I feel sorry for the poor guy who gets stuck with my block of wood with a pen sticking out of it.
Anyway, I've turned three pens since. It turns out (no pun intended!) that it's the perfect after-work type project as I can usually knock out at least one pen in an evening, so it satisfies that urge to ruin wood in the hours between commuting and sleeping. Here's a small pic of my first attempts:
The one on the left (I believe) is made from cocobolo, the middle from cherry and the right is maple burl that I have finally worked up the nerve to use. Not exactly museum showpieces, but I'm slowly getting better at it and having a great time doing it. It's nice to be doing something somewhat productive with my spare time again.
Posted by Rob at November 17, 2006 9:48 PM