I’ve always been a DYI kind of person and enjoyed doing home renos, building decks and fences and that sort of thing. So years ago when I needed a break from work I naturally gravitated towards woodworking. Mostly I dabbled with functional things around the house like bookshelves and cabinets and I did make the odd bed or dresser for nieces and nephews. And of course the obligatory cutting board or two (or three or four…….). Actually I did quite a few really nice end grain boards for Christmas, etc. But I never had a lot of time for it until I retired a few years ago. I sold the house and moved to the lake and had a little shop built so I had a place to putter when I wasn’t out fishing. And now that’s usually where you’ll find me and I’ve never been happier.
However it was only last year that I discovered wood turning and now it’s become a bit of an obsession. Like most woodworkers I hoard scraps and had tons of odds and ends from my cutting boards and I thought turning would be a good way to make use of all of these little pieces. I was thinking pens and little nick-knacks so I just bought a midi sized lathe that I could tuck away some place and pull out every now and then. Well once I got started and discovered all of the cool things you can do on a lathe I never wound up putting it away. Living at the lake, fire wood is something I have in abundance but I found that a lot of the things I was seeing people make and I wanted to try couldn’t easily be done on the little lathe because it didn’t have the weight to handle something that started out off balance. My first attempt at making a bowl from a log was something I’m sure most of you would have just shook your head at. Between inexperience with the gouges and the lathe making my entire workbench jiggle across the shop it was a bit of a joke. But as soon as I got it trued up and things settled down it was a lot of fun and it didn’t turn out half bad. Looks kind of like what your 12 year old would bring home from shop class ;-)
Anyway this spring I spent some time reorganizing the shop so I could accommodate a full size lathe and bought myself a Laguna 1836. I’ve been mostly focused on bowl turning because I can definitely see having fun with segmented turnings. The flat work involved in building the rings combined with the lathe work is something I’m sure is going to be fun. The only problem is that my learning has been self-taught via trial and error and of course YouTube so there’s been a lot of frustrating periods. Unfortunately I live in the boonies so there are no clubs nearby that I could join and I go away for the winter which is mostly when they meet anyway. But more than once I’ve come across posts from this forum when I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong so I thought it’s time I should join up.
First bowl and shop
However it was only last year that I discovered wood turning and now it’s become a bit of an obsession. Like most woodworkers I hoard scraps and had tons of odds and ends from my cutting boards and I thought turning would be a good way to make use of all of these little pieces. I was thinking pens and little nick-knacks so I just bought a midi sized lathe that I could tuck away some place and pull out every now and then. Well once I got started and discovered all of the cool things you can do on a lathe I never wound up putting it away. Living at the lake, fire wood is something I have in abundance but I found that a lot of the things I was seeing people make and I wanted to try couldn’t easily be done on the little lathe because it didn’t have the weight to handle something that started out off balance. My first attempt at making a bowl from a log was something I’m sure most of you would have just shook your head at. Between inexperience with the gouges and the lathe making my entire workbench jiggle across the shop it was a bit of a joke. But as soon as I got it trued up and things settled down it was a lot of fun and it didn’t turn out half bad. Looks kind of like what your 12 year old would bring home from shop class ;-)
Anyway this spring I spent some time reorganizing the shop so I could accommodate a full size lathe and bought myself a Laguna 1836. I’ve been mostly focused on bowl turning because I can definitely see having fun with segmented turnings. The flat work involved in building the rings combined with the lathe work is something I’m sure is going to be fun. The only problem is that my learning has been self-taught via trial and error and of course YouTube so there’s been a lot of frustrating periods. Unfortunately I live in the boonies so there are no clubs nearby that I could join and I go away for the winter which is mostly when they meet anyway. But more than once I’ve come across posts from this forum when I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong so I thought it’s time I should join up.
First bowl and shop
