Platter made from aromatic cedar. This time I experimented with crossing the segments. I had originally planned another layer, but the lather has limited room for the larger diameter bowls, and I ran out of room. Approx 12 inches in diameter.

I built a cider press to process the apples we picked from our trees. One five gallon bucket of apples fully processed yields about 1.5 gallons of cider. The plunger is douglas fir, turned on the lathe. The frame is just 2x4s bolted together with threaded rod. The bucket has a bunch of 1/8 inch holes drilled all over the sides to drain the juice. The holes were sufficient to filter out the pulp. Initially holes were only drilled in the bottom two inches of the bucket, but the first pressing I discovered that juice was as likely to press out around the plunger and up. Drilling additional holes further up the side of the bucket dealt with this and made the pressing much faster. I did a second batch with two buckets of apples, pastuerized and bottled. The yield was 34 12oz bottles, which is a bit over 3 gallons. The apple yield is somewhat variable between buckets, but the bug damage has been pretty minimal.

More bowl turning. The elm logs I’m using are really hard to work with. The bug infestation makes really interesting grain, but it’s full of holes.

I made new knobs for my Roland Blues Cube. The old plastic ones where lame and missing their tops. These are machined out of aluminum and knurled on the outside. I was able to get the technique repeatable enough that a knob would take about 15 minutes to turn.

My small bench lathe does make tool changes difficult - I have to remove the tailstock to change the drill bits, and there is only room for two tools on the post while using the center. Using a center to support the piece once I had drilled made a big difference as far as stability of plunge cuts with the form tool and the parting tool.

I was able to make a new form cutting tool based off my experience with my previous tools I ground. I found that when plunge cutting with a form tool or a parting tool, the tool would often catch, jamming the piece out of the chuck. Getting the tool clearances correct is very important when grinding. The rounded edge is tricky to grind - I use a dremel rotary tool by hand. Grinding the end of the plunge tool after using the dremel ensures a clean, perpendicular edge. The next important thing was getting the part off and form tools perpendicular to the axis of rotation, so that the tool is going straight in and not rubbing on the sides. I used my dial indicator to measure the variance over the range of the crossfeed, and adjust the tool to be parallel. This calibration was time consuming, but I was able to mount both tools permanently in the tool post so that tool changes did not disrupt the alignment.

As I practice, I’m starting to get a better feel for the feeds and speeds. Some research showed that I was trying to turn at a bit faster speed than was appropriate for aluminum. Reducing the speed and getting the feed right make a big difference. There’s definitely a lot of awareness of feel that develops. Modern CNC machines can adjust the feed rate and rotation to get the right linear speed through the entire cut, but it requires a lot of practice to do this manually.

Latest experiment with the metal lathe: knurled knobs. The goal is to make a complete set to replace the plastic knobs on my Roland Blues Cube.

This is an absinthe fountain I made for Miranda for Christmas. Apparently you are supposed to drip water over sugar cubes into the absinthe until the color changes to a opaque light green.

The base is made from douglas fir 2x6. The center is two lengths joined together. The top has an additional two layers to make the square for the bowl. The bottom has two sets of 3 inch side blocks along the center, and three layers on each side of joined lengths to provide the wide base.

The rough blank prep and glue up took several weeks, interrupted somewhat by a businees trip. The turning itself took one evening, and the sanding another evening.

Douglas fir cuts well along the grain - across the grain the fibers are very strong and tend to drag and bend. Even with a sharp tool, the surface still is prone to chipping, which required a bit of sanding.

The water vessel is a glass vase or something I found at the thrift store. I purchased the two spigots: they are pretty heavy duty ball valves. I was able to drill the glass with diamond grit bores on the drill press with some difficulty. The bits I purchased where 12mm, which was the diameter advertised as being compatible with the spigot. The spigot ended up being closer to 16mm, so I had to drill four closely spaced holes in a squarish configuration to make a large opening. The gaskets sealed quite nicely.

The finish was a large number of coats of polyurethane directly on the wood. I wanted a very light white finish. The finish also needed to strongly seal the wood to prevent any problems from drips or spills.

Successful attempt to do a minimum waste glue up for bowl turning using polygons. My first attempt resulted in a few gaps, primarily caused by the strips of wood not being of a consistent thickness, creating error in the required cut angle. This glue up was significantly better, and the octagon turned out nicely without any gaps. I glued each layer one at a time, and decide to not alternate the octagon. There were slight offsets between the two polygon layers, not noticeable unless you are looking closely. Gluing the two strips together then cutting the polygon segments would result in a better edge.
This is turned from oak salvaged from cabinet doors from the Habitat Re-store. I’ve done nearly every wood project from reclaimed wood.