One of the things I wanted to do while we were in Charlottesville was to devote some time to developing my woodturning skill. Although I was really interested in it while we were in Houston, and I had access to a really great woodturning club, my shop was crammed into a tiny space in the back of a not-well-ventilated garage. It’s hard to be patient and work on slow, steady movements while swatting mosquitoes, squinting in the dim light, and wiping dripping sweat out of your eyes.
Our house here has a great space for a workshop in the basement. It’s large, well lit, and climate controlled. I’ve been working to get it ready and organized, and finally last night fired off the lathe and turned something!
What is it, you may ask? It’s a log. Turned round. Into a lot of shavings. On the floor. But man, was it nice to get in a little time on the machine. I’m desperately in need of resharpening all my tools — what I have were sharpened by myself and a variety of other people, using a variety of tools and personal preferences. My goal is to get all of them sharpened in one consistent manner so that I can vary them from that baseline to find what I like. Right now, pretty much only my bowl gouge (which is ground more like a spindle gouge, go figure…) is useful, so that’s what I used here.
I have a hunk of black walnut that I bought for a couple bucks at my new club’s silent auction a few months ago. I’m thinking that it’s going to become my first pepper mill once I get the sharpening and reshaping done!
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