It's been a while

Yes, it's been a while, gentle readers.

Several circumstances conspired to keep me from my appointed blogging. The first circumstance was that I totally butchered one of the dovetails on my chest of drawers. I chopped a tail when I should have chopped a pin. I didn't have enough material to re-make the piece. Disgusted with myself, I haven't looked at the project since. Every now and then I thought to myself that I really should get back to it, and get back to the blog. Needless to say, I didn't.
Then I had a bit of a focus change and the shop didn't see much action for a couple of months. My interests can be cyclical.
Now we find ourselves in a deeply wood-ish phase, but not with flat things. No, I find myself draw to the dark side: wood turning.
Oh, I had a wood lathe. Two, actually, but one hardly counts as it is a nasty off-shore piece of garbage. The other wood lathe that I had is the one that I blogged about back in late October / early November 2008. It's a very solid bit of kit with a great deal of character, but that character comes with a price - the headstock spindle thread is a rare one, and every other aspect of it tended to be non-standard, making purchasing accessories an exercise in irritation. I played with it for a while, then I bought another one. A made-in-Canada classic General 160-1
Above we see my lathe, ready for action with a partially-turned bowl in the chuck. Yes, the chuck. I was able to effortlessly buy a proper chuck for it because it has a bog-standard 1"x8tpi spindle thread. Nice.
For the first week I didn't have the chuck yet so I was doing spindle turning, but once I had the chuck I was able to start on bowls, as well as boxes and other cup-chucked items. The world is my burrito. :)


Above we see a few items I have turned so far. There are two beech bowls, one box of an unknown wood, one maple froe-club at the back, a maple carver's mallet at the right, and in the left-front is a spinning top which I made as an experiment.

So turning seems to be my new thing. I'll try to be a dutiful blogger and keep you abreast of developments, gentle readers, as I embark on this new and unusually addictive aspect of woodworking.

Mike