First Attempt (#001)

#001

This was the first thing I went into with an idea of what I wanted the piece to look like.

Lets be honest, I had no real idea of what I was doing. I had resigned myself to turning scrap wood into wood shavings & smaller pieces of scrap wood until I could learn what I’m doing. It has been a long time since I tried learning a new skill from scratch, so I understood that failure would be a big part of this. Knowing that took all the pressure off so I could just learn without expectation.

So my goal was to see if I could make a simple lidded container.

I put a piece of scrap wood on the lathe & dove in. I tried to get some of the basic things down while seeing what became of it. It was calming & exciting & pure pleasure. All I did was focus on what I was doing & let the rest of the world just drop away. When I finally stepped away from the lathe the piece was almost done.

I love how it came out. My brother in law was given this for his birthday.

The Start. (#000)

This is where it started.

Once I had the lathe unpacked & ready to go I had to decide what to start with. I had never turned a piece of wood, had no idea what to expect, & was nervous as hell that I would get sucked into the chuck & loose all my fingers.

I decided to start simple.

I put part of an old shovel handle on the lathe & turned the power on. I tried the different chisels & tried to get a feel for this new piece of equipment.

There is nothing fancy, complicated, or really interesting about this piece, but it is the starting point. This is where this journey begins.