My friend Jon dropped off a couple ash logs from their property for turning, so I took one and turned some rustic bowls for his wife, Kristin, for her birthday. Here is the log, marked for chainsaw cuts so I can saw out the pith. After cutting: The bark has some nice bug patterns: Now…

Quick project from a couple weeks ago: Turning a handle out of walnut for a hook remover. Hook removers are great for quickly unhooking fish without touching them (which can harm their protective mucus layer.) You just hook them on your tippet, run them down and over the hook, and the hook usually slides right…

I turned a new set of tenkara line spools earlier this week out of a piece of mimosa wood. From the last set of spools I turned, I gifted the smaller one and kept the larger two-tiered one. After using it for a couple months, I decided that I wanted a smaller, thinner one to…

I turned a fruit bowl out of oak (from the same tree as the platters) as a gift for my grandfather for his 90th birthday. This was the first project where I got to use a speed reducer on the Shopsmith, so it took me some extra time to set it up and figure out…

I turned two oak platters recently, both from the same slab, in two different styles. One has a foot, a curved profile, and shallow cavity, the other has a flat bottom, steep edges, and a deeper cavity. A couple years ago, my aunt and uncle in north Georgia had a big Post Oak (in the…

I had a Griffin Odyssey Spider that clamped to the table, but I found that kind of limiting. It was shorter than was comfortable, and I found myself hunching. I wanted something taller that I could move around, so I decided to build a base for it. I kept my eye out for the right…

My friend Erin at Red Cottage Fiber Studio sent me some photos of a well used (and slightly misused) darning ball for mending fabric that she found at a yard sale. Looks like it was made from a piece of oak. I had a chunk of cherry from their property sitting in my shop, so…

Last week we got invited to a last-minute birthday party the night before. I wanted to turn something on the late that night anyway, so I decided to make a kitchen mallet for a gift. Sometime to crush ice, make cutlets, smash cucumbers, crack peppercorns, etc. I turned it out of a cherry limb that…

In an effort to post more, here is an oak cup I turned recently and mentioned briefly in a weekly post that I think deserves its own post. I’ve had this piece of oak in the workshop for a couple years. I roughed it round at some point and abandoned whatever I had in mind…

In 2020 I helped my dad split some huge oak rounds for firewood. The grain was so straight that I had to grab a couple pieces. At some point in early 2021 I planed them down flat. I think I had three individual foot-long slabs. I’ve used them for various projects the last couple years.…

On Instagram, Richard Findley posted his 2024 Festive Turning Challenge: This is the first year I’ve done the challenge, and it comes at a good time because I’ve just turned a couple of bowls, so this was good hollowing practice. Here is the bell I turned out of a piece of cherry:

I turned some tenkara line spools out of spalted maple on the lathe. Tenkara spools are something you can wrap your line around while in transit. Tenkara rods are longer than standard fly rods, collapsable, and have a fixed length of line tied to the end instead of a reel. When you move around, a…