This morning an Alberta Clipper is spreading some light snow over south central PA and the weatherman is promising more for Saturday. Maybe I can finally get to play with the snow blower!!!

 

It has been a great week for us woodturners. Lots of videos/projects and even a piece of FREE software aimed just at turners.

As for me, I did get in a little lathe time. The customer, for whom I turned the first A-10 bullet wanted another. Made from hard maple.

 

 

 

Sometime back, I made a parting tool from an old, cheap, butcher knife. It worked OK, but didn’t stay sharp very long. This week, I made another one from a “SawsAll†blade. For the handle I used my very first foray into Celtic Knot turning. I had kept the turning around, mostly just for sentimental reasons and decided to make it useful.

 

 

I removed the teeth from the blade using the bench grinder, being careful not to over heat the blade.

 

Then cleaned up the blade, shaped the point and squared off the end that goes into the handle.

 

 

 

 

Cut the old turning in half

 

Shaped the handle

 

The neat design formed by the inserts

 

Created a tenon for the copper pipe ferule

 

I did not put any finish on the handle, just sanded it.

 

 

Popular Woodworking has another Tim Yoder video posted on YouTube. This time he makes a Cigar Holder. Very much like making a pen. Lots of good tips.

 

 

 

Another project I found was a “Ring Bowlâ€. It is a nice little item to be placed in the kitchen for the “Mrs.†to place her rings in while baking or any activity for which she might want to remove those precious gifts you have given her.

 

 

 

http://www.woodturningonline.com/Turning/Turning_content/ring-bowls.pdf

 

 

Finally, yesterday, I picked up this link for software designed just for the lathe. There isn’t a lot of lathe software available so I decided to check it out.

 

 

http://www.lathemagic.com/lm/

 

First, it is FREE!, Second, it doesn’t “install†on your computer but rather just runs from and executable. My antivirus and malware software didn’t pick up anything, either. Right now, it is in a beta form so there will probably be additions and other changes down the line. You can find the download, tutorial and PDF manual at the above link. I haven’t read the manual, but did watch the tutorial and played with the program. It is really neat! You can design you own shapes and see what they would look like before committing them to wood- especially nice for the beginning turner. The really great feature is that you can print a profile and use that at the lathe as a guide. So far, I haven’t found a way to add my rolling pin inserts to the drawing to be able to animate what they would look like when turned- but still- IT IS FREE!!!

 

Safe Turning!

great ideal on the use of the sawsall blade, have to give that a try. Taking a look at the lathe computer program also.

I'd like to see the sawzall blade working.   Have you used it yet?

The cutting edges on them is marvelous stuff ( dunno about the rest of the blade) but I'd wonder if the blade wouldn't flutter  in that application.

 

 

Nice  handle.

I like the bullet and handle for the parting tool. Along with the concern for fluttering I also have concern about the hardness. the bi-metal saws-all blade may not hold an edge either as the hardened area is just slightly larger than the teeth. Buy grinding the teeth away most of the hardened steel is also ground off. I hope I'm wrong so please let us know how it works for you.

Wow lots of great stuff this time Lew I love it. I'm going to have to try the thin parting tool at some point but right now I have a 1/4" one that works well enough

Love that bullet and the ring bowl. I tried making a ring bowl a while back (like last year) but really didn't know what size to make it so I just goofed off with it and ultimately it got re-purposed for something else LOL

That's pretty cool Lew.