Happy Birthday to Me, Belatedly
February 7th, 2008 by admin
I just realized that I never got around to posting about Chip’s ultra-cool birthday gift (to me). It’s a lathe!
What’s a lathe, you say? Well, it’s a very nifty piece of machinery that is used to make cool stuff like baseball bats and goblets and bowls and anything else you can turn out of wood.
Not that I needed another hobby, but ever since I went to Woodcraft and saw turned bowls and goblets I’ve wanted to try it, and now I can! I’m not terribly good at it yet, but I managed to make a tiny little cup out of a scrap of wood the nice man at Woodcraft gave me, and I’m darned proud of it. I had help, of course.
Special thanks to Joe for carting the thing up from Louisville!
Here’s the rough cut of the wood the nice Woodcraft man gave me (it’s butternut, if you care):
Here’s me lathing (you can tell ’cause of the red hair, fairy tattoo, and UK shirt. What you CAN’T tell is that the piece of wood in this photo is moving at 7600 RPMs, roughly):
Here’s Chip lathing:
Here’s Joe lathing:
And here’s the little cup. It’s a bit sad, but not terrible for a first attempt. I hope to improve, so that I can lathe pepper grinders for everyone for Christmas (please tell me now if you’re allergic to pepper):
Right now I’m working on a birthday gift for Krista (I can say that here because I know she never reads my blog) and I’ve hit some snags. It’s definitely a challenging hobby, but it’s loads of fun! So if you’d like to turn your very own baseball bat, or if your son’s satanic dog chewed up the rungs on the chairs to the dining set you inherited from your grandmother and you want to replace them *cough,* I now have a lathe that you’re welcome to come play with, thanks to my loving and thoughtful fiancé.
Jennifer wrote on 02/8/08 at 6:20 pm :
WOW! I am really impressed! I had no idea that lathing was a hobby! I think your first attempt looks amazing.
Bryan wrote on 02/9/08 at 3:38 pm :
And i was just saying to Jennifer the other day after spilling some milk, “if we only knew someone with a lathe we could have avoided this disaster.”
Now, I can rest assured that should i ever need some lathing, I’ll just call Red on the special Lathe phone and she’ll be here in a jiffy.
Cool gift. I’d be totally all about making hundreds of bowls. Good luck. We’ll look for more pictures. JBF
Admin wrote on 02/11/08 at 8:32 am :
Bowls are harder to make than you’d think. We started to try one last night and had all sorts of trouble, BUT Chip made himself a baseball bat! I’ll post photos of that soon.
dlyn wrote on 02/12/08 at 12:37 pm :
I would LOVE to have a lathe – what a cool present. Nice blog – bookmarking you for future visits.
Admin wrote on 02/23/08 at 1:02 am :
Thanks for visiting, dlyn. Hope to see you again.
Angelpoop » Blog Archive » I Made a Bowl wrote on 04/20/08 at 12:23 am :
[...] I took a bowl turning class at Woodcraft today, so that I could better use the lathe that Chip got me for my birthday. The guys at Woodcraft are really nice and helpful and generally happy people to spend time with, so I recommend them for all your woodworking needs. [...]