Man its dark in there!

Howdy folks, got a little more progress on the shop this weekend. As regular readers well know it’s been a long project, and I’m far from done. This weekend was spent avoiding the last summer blast of heat, and hanging the doors on the shop…

















This may seem like a small step, but for me it marks when I can truly start moving in equipment and stuff into the shop. I made a couple of trips to the storage unit. The first trip was to get the drywall and cement board which I scored this spring. For a mere $20 I got 5 sheets of moisture resistant drywall, plus numerous cutoffs from a friend of Mark's who was clearing out his garage.














I forgot to get a photo, but I'll grab one tonight after work.

The second trip brought my lathe and benches.
















Starting to get a little crowded in there, but that’s the nature of the beast… at only 240 sq ft I’ll be doing the ‘dance’ a lot as I get things ironed out.

Here's my first bench. And my midi lathe:

Here’s the first of my old workbench’s to be reassembled: I’m 6’1, and this bench is 41” high. I’m going to lower the other half after measuring my mini lathe on there:
As it sits now, if I were to use the other half of the bench the spindle would be at 57” high. I think I’m going to lower it about 7” just for good measure.

I’ve still got the other half of the bench, plus a benchtop drill press, a storage cabinet and a bandsaw to stuff in there as well. Not to mention, lumber, and so forth.

Turning my first bowl on the lathe

This past week I was out of town for work, and I visited my good friend Don Orr's shop. He was gracious enough to host me at his shop for the evening for dinner and teaching me how to turn a bowl.

We started with sharpening, he showed me his wolverine sharpening jig home-made clone, and how to shape and hone the gouges we used.

I didn't get a photo of the profiles, but one was basically an ellsworth grind, and the other was a much blunter profile, which I liked more. I also got to try a round scraper for cleanup and then sanding on the lathe. Note to self, get DC fired up before getting the spinny thing going... koff koff... Turning wasn't bad, but sanding would have been a different story. Don has a really cool DC hose holder for the lathe, I need pictures of it the next time I visit so I can build a copy of it.

Here's the end product...no, wait. I'm only kidding....a little..Don had a 8 or 9" Ash blank all set.After a couple of walk throughs for angle and such here I went...Don is an excellent teacher, and I cannot thank him enough for opening his shop to me and giving me this lesson. I had a blast, Thanks Don!

Here I am starting to rough out the blank after we got it on the lathe and spinning nicely. It was a little unbalanced, but not enough that Don's very nice Jet full sized lathe couldn't handle it. He also has a Jet Midi, but for this large of a blank it wouldn't have done the job very well.

As Little Bill Grumbine would call it (.... yep, I said little. Ask Bill about hanging out with Bill and Nettie Turpin from NC after 5 Barns and you'll understand 'Little') I was excercising my 'turning muscle.' (turning muscle = Big Belly, something which Bill and I share)

After awhile, we wound up with this:

Here's proof that I didn't turn it into a Funnel (turn right through the bottom of the bowl)

Here are a Couple of shots I took at my motel later that evening

Thanks for looking!