Teaching my son to turn.

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spnemo

spnemo

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Tustin, MI
My 9 year old son has been begging me to teach him how to turn a pen. So, for Christmas I granted his wish and we started his first pen. He chose a gold slimline and a red acrylic blank. Today, we drilled and cut the blank and glued in the tubes. We will finish the pen next week! This should be fun.
 
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Sean, That is so neat. The memories of the two of you sharing this will last both your lifetimes. Happy Holiday Season! Regards, Doc
 
My daughter has made a pencil and a pen. She made the pen for her teacher this year. It is always fun for me to teach her something new. Instead of her showing me how to set my digital watch... lol
 
Sean, pretty soon you will have to get him his own lathe. My daughter started when she was 7. We just made pens for all of her teachers for christmas. Woodturning with kids really builds confidence and self esteem.

Dave
 
Well, the pen is done! It isn't perfect, but it is very good for his first atempt. It was really hard to resist doing the work for him. He did everything except assembly (for fear of cracking).
 
Good deal! I'm waiting until my kids are old enough to understand what's going on with the risks of power tools before I let them take a shot at turning a pen. My oldest one's getting close, but we still have the problem of "forgetting" what she was told in a 2 second window.
 
Here are a couple of pictures:
 

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My 19 year old son never really got into it. He got excited at first, but the detail work burned him out pretty quick. My 7 year old daughter on the other hand... She's made 4 and really wants to do more.

If yours gets excited and stays excited, awesome! But don't be too disappointed if he moves on. Kids will be kids.
 
My other hobby is photography. I tried very hard to get my sons (now 31 and 33) interested in photography when they were younger, but it didn't seem to stick.

But in the last year, our older son has taken up the hobby with a vengeance. Of course, he's digital (he's a computer geek by profession), so he doesn't do the darkroom thing.

He has also adopted a couple of my other passions - fountain pens, and coffee.

So the point is that while it may seem that our attempts to influence the passions of our offspring don't have much impact, it's amazing how those attempts trigger something many years later.
 
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