November 28, 2006

Still Turning...

I'm still obsessing over my new obsession. Been out in the shop pretty much every day since Thanksgiving making pens and trying to decide where in hell to put them all.

No, sorry, no pics of the latest creations for a couple of reasons. First off, Amy, my wife and part-time photographer has come down with some sort of funk that's had her feeling like dog squeeze since Friday. Secondly, some of the turnings may or may not become Christmas presents so I'm trying to keep them under wraps, no pun intended.

Pen turning has turned out to be a very relaxing diversion. While I like doing "larger" projects, the big power tools tend to get noisy after a while. Listening to the stereo while the planer is running tends to become difficult. But when the lathe is running, its generally fairly peaceful, if you discount the occasional expletives spewed when I screw something up. Generally that only happens when I try to be "cute" and try something new.

On a side note, I found an interesting article online about using corn cobs to turn pens (here's a link). The guy who wrote it makes it look much easier than it seems to be. The cobs themselves are fairly easy to work with, but once you turn them to the match the pen kit, well, things don't always work out as planned. I'm determined to make one that looks decent because, well, they just look cool and hell, it's cheaper than screwing up nice wood blanks. I'm sure the squirrels won't complain much either.

Posted by Rob at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2006

A New Obsession

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:


(clicking the picture will take you to some more pictures)

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 9:48 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2006

I'm ba-aack

You may have noticed that the site has changed a bit. What was old is new again. After a rather lengthy hiatus, I'm back in the shop and decided that, well, I was tired of the clunky look of phpNuke and decided to move back to Movable Type. So, stay tuned...more to come!

Posted by Rob at 2:20 PM | Comments (0)