civilwartalk
Member
Greetings from the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia!
I've been doing a lot of wood working at home, more recently than ever before. I think it started when my son's started with the pinewood derby cars in cub scouts.... That was a black hole that I was obsessed with for about 6 years... later on that lead me to doing scroll saw work for my wife, she does paint pours, and I create the shapes she paints on. I also built a bunch or different things over this summer, tacking woodworking projects that I'd never dreamed of before, building garden beds, building shelving for storage, building a work bench for my wife, I built several outdoor furniture pieces for our deck, and then I built a whole greenhouse in the fall.
Our home seems pretty well organized now, and I've been working on another one of my long-term projects. I maintain one of the largest and longest running American Civil War Forums online, and I want to create gifts for my staff and for contests... and I've been meaning to come up with some new ideas. Now that I'm looking for some new woodworking challenges, pen making seemed like a perfect fit.
So... I did it. I just purchased a small wood lathe on Wednesday night. It will be a little while before it arrives.
Many years ago, I used to help my dad with his Craftsman lathe, but he used it to turn metal and sometimes plastics... so I'm not a complete stranger to lathing, but I'm not used to using hand tools to cut on the work piece!
I have to say, I'm so glad I didn't make any additional purchases beyond the lathe, I was all prepared to buy kits and parts, and finding this site has got me turned all upside down. I got here before I made a bunch of dumb purchases, so I'm happy I figured that out!
I think this site got me out of the "shopping cart" mode of learning, and looking in the right direction. The turning between the centers method seems simple, and logical, and also the most economical way to start, so I'm probably going to stock up with the tooling and parts to use that method.
From what I've read, if I use my lathe(s) to do almost everything, sand the blank square, drill, turn, finish, buff... I can probably skip buying a lot of other power tools.
Also, I think instead of spending money on a bunch of slimline pen kits... as I was originally thinking... I'm going buy a few better kits to try out later, probably a few variations on the same kit. Once I get the feel for turning, I'll try to make an actual pen. Before I do that, I'm going to buy a whole bunch of tubes, and a box of cheap pen blanks for .50 each, and do a whole bunch of practice on sharpening my new tools, squaring my blanks, drilling, turning, and finishing before I make a pen. I think I'll save myself a whole lot of headaches!
Oh, and I inherited my dad's old Craftsman metal lathe, it's not very big, more of a hobby lathe, but I can probably use that for some tasks like buffing, maybe even do some interesting things not normally done with wood pens....
And I can already tell, I want to cast my own resin blanks, so that's something I'm going to plan to learn over the next few weeks!
Thanks for having me here, and thanks for providing all the great helpful information already!
Mike from CivilWarTalk
I've been doing a lot of wood working at home, more recently than ever before. I think it started when my son's started with the pinewood derby cars in cub scouts.... That was a black hole that I was obsessed with for about 6 years... later on that lead me to doing scroll saw work for my wife, she does paint pours, and I create the shapes she paints on. I also built a bunch or different things over this summer, tacking woodworking projects that I'd never dreamed of before, building garden beds, building shelving for storage, building a work bench for my wife, I built several outdoor furniture pieces for our deck, and then I built a whole greenhouse in the fall.
Our home seems pretty well organized now, and I've been working on another one of my long-term projects. I maintain one of the largest and longest running American Civil War Forums online, and I want to create gifts for my staff and for contests... and I've been meaning to come up with some new ideas. Now that I'm looking for some new woodworking challenges, pen making seemed like a perfect fit.
So... I did it. I just purchased a small wood lathe on Wednesday night. It will be a little while before it arrives.
Many years ago, I used to help my dad with his Craftsman lathe, but he used it to turn metal and sometimes plastics... so I'm not a complete stranger to lathing, but I'm not used to using hand tools to cut on the work piece!
I have to say, I'm so glad I didn't make any additional purchases beyond the lathe, I was all prepared to buy kits and parts, and finding this site has got me turned all upside down. I got here before I made a bunch of dumb purchases, so I'm happy I figured that out!
I think this site got me out of the "shopping cart" mode of learning, and looking in the right direction. The turning between the centers method seems simple, and logical, and also the most economical way to start, so I'm probably going to stock up with the tooling and parts to use that method.
From what I've read, if I use my lathe(s) to do almost everything, sand the blank square, drill, turn, finish, buff... I can probably skip buying a lot of other power tools.
Also, I think instead of spending money on a bunch of slimline pen kits... as I was originally thinking... I'm going buy a few better kits to try out later, probably a few variations on the same kit. Once I get the feel for turning, I'll try to make an actual pen. Before I do that, I'm going to buy a whole bunch of tubes, and a box of cheap pen blanks for .50 each, and do a whole bunch of practice on sharpening my new tools, squaring my blanks, drilling, turning, and finishing before I make a pen. I think I'll save myself a whole lot of headaches!
Oh, and I inherited my dad's old Craftsman metal lathe, it's not very big, more of a hobby lathe, but I can probably use that for some tasks like buffing, maybe even do some interesting things not normally done with wood pens....
And I can already tell, I want to cast my own resin blanks, so that's something I'm going to plan to learn over the next few weeks!
Thanks for having me here, and thanks for providing all the great helpful information already!
Mike from CivilWarTalk