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What’s on your lathe?

I am new to woodturning, so on my lathe is currently 2x2x18 maple that I am practicing the basics. I joined a local group for some pointers and I commonly heard that I should practice spindle turning before I delve into bowl turning. So, I am heeding the advice of the more experienced and have been practicing all kind of spindle turns.
 
Nick Piergrossi said:
I am new to woodturning, so on my lathe is currently 2x2x18 maple that I am practicing the basics. I joined a local group for some pointers and I commonly heard that I should practice spindle turning before I delve into bowl turning. So, I am heeding the advice of the more experienced and have been practicing all kind of spindle turns.
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Nick, If you haven't already, find a woodturning club within 50 miles of you and start attending the meetings. It will greatly accelerate your learning curve. Just making some friends and getting questions answered from fellow turners is a gift.
 
DON FRANK said:
Nick, If you haven't already, find a woodturning club within 50 miles of you and start attending the meetings. It will greatly accelerate your learning curve. Just making some friends and getting questions answered from fellow turners is a gift.
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Thank you Don, I can say that it is fantastic advice. That is exactly what I did. To my surprise, the club meets about a block away from my house. I never knew they met there. I was surprised at the number of members who were in attendance.

To your point, I have learned more in the first two meetings (and after meeting discussions) than I had in my high school shop class albeit almost 40 years ago..
 
I have always wanted to turn a pipe. A guy in our club is well known for it. He makes some double chamber non traditional looking pipes. Check out Anthony Harris sometime for ideas if you continue making them.
 
Started running through a lot of old blanks to see what would come out of them.
This one had a few cracks and the ca glue didn’t help it stay together… should have just put it in the burn pile. Kept getting smaller as I tried to outwit the cracks but it won that arm wrestle!
 

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Driving home from work last week I noticed a guy cutting up a tree. I stopped and talked to him. The tree had toppled. It was a large shumard oak. I took a couple of pieces and told him I'd make him a bowl. This is my first time turning shumard oak. It has very large pores.

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I gave him the bowl last night. I took a couple of pictures of the tree while I was there. You don't really get a sense of scale. The base is more than 40".

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Kent Reisdorph said:
Driving home from work last week I noticed a guy cutting up a tree. I stopped and talked to him. The tree had toppled. It was a large shumard oak. I took a couple of pieces and told him I'd make him a bowl. This is my first time turning shumard oak. It has very large pores.

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I gave him the bowl last night. I took a couple of pictures of the tree while I was there. You don't really get a sense of scale. The base is more than 40".

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Cracked pretty quickly! (I assume it was cut that day.)
 
Kent Reisdorph said:
Driving home from work last week I noticed a guy cutting up a tree. I stopped and talked to him. The tree had toppled. It was a large shumard oak. I took a couple of pieces and told him I'd make him a bowl. This is my first time turning shumard oak. It has very large pores.

View attachment 64140View attachment 64141

I gave him the bowl last night. I took a couple of pictures of the tree while I was there. You don't really get a sense of scale. The base is more than 40".

View attachment 64138View attachment 64139
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Just looking at the stump and the short sections of log I would say that it looks dead. A live healthy tree would likely have a fan of roots maybe 6' high but that one just looks like it broke off at the ground level.
 
Phil Hamel said:
Chunk of maple pith that I saved from the last bowl. Cut it into 2 pipe forms and immediately destroyed one. Lol!
Second one came out better. Still need to drill the stem hole and finish. So far not bad for my 3rd one ever.
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Looks great! Pipemaking is how I discovered woodturning. I started with a drill press and small metal lathe and quickly realized I like woodturning more than pipemaking. (I don't enjoy all the shaping on a sanding wheel, and the smell of hot vulcanite — ugh!) But I've been making threaded bowls for the Radiator pipe system and having fun with that, since I can do all the work on a lathe.

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I tried to get out of my comfort zone with this small birch bowl (foreground), loosely inspired by a gidgee bowl by Richard Raffan (background). It was a good exercise, even though I don't love the final result. I mostly like the interior curve (other than a slightly sharp transition at the rim), and the upper exterior curve is okay, but the foot...well, I'm not happy with that. I reworked it twice and finally stopped (too late!) with a foot that was too narrow. The proportions just don't work.

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Kent Reisdorph said:
Swamp Chestnut Oak. Decent flame on this one. LaserPecker let me down again. I've narrowed the problem down to the app. I'll have to sand off the logo and reburn it.
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Maybe do a test burn of the species label on a scrap of brown paper before committing. I just got my laser pecker a couple months ago and I agree the app is not very easy to use and is often glitchy.
 
Mike Novak said:
@Asher Langton , where do you get your parts from?
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The Radiator pipe frames were made by a guy named H. Wiebe, but he stopped making them and open-sourced the design files. His site is down now but I found the files (attached) via the Wayback Machine. Vermont Freehand sold off Wiebe’s parts inventory, and it looks like only the metal tubing and stems are left:


As for the rest of the tooling, everything is either from Rawkrafted, Vermont Freehand, or directly from yuxuanjie7603 on Instagram, a Chinese pipemaker who manufactures the chucks jaws and some of the chamber bits sold by Rawkrafted.
 

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Rick Moreton said:
Maybe do a test burn of the species label on a scrap of brown paper before committing. I just got my laser pecker a couple months ago and I agree the app is not very easy to use and is often glitchy.
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Sound advice, but I'm too impatient. I'm pretty sure I know how to solve it. I just need to make sure I shut down the LaserPecker app every time I switch images.
 
Kent Reisdorph said:
. LaserPecker let me down again. I've narrowed the problem down to the app. I'll have to sand off the logo and reburn it.
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LP has burned me like that before, too, pardon the pun. I'd suggest saving back all your leftover scraps and bits of flat wood (leftover tenons after parting off something, perhaps? that you can use some cheap 3M double sided tape (comes off easy the kind you can get at dollar store craft aisle) and stick a scrap to your foot before burning - that way once you get it to burn what you are after, then you don't need to fiddle with the setup and alignment and just repeat the burn again?
 
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