My first introduction to wood turning came when I was about 9 or 10 years old, watching my uncle turn a set of chair spindles to restore an antique chair. My uncle was a master furniture refinisher, restorer and builder. I was next introduced to wood turning in a shop class when I was about 12 or 13. The teacher demonstrated how to use the lathe but he never let anyone in the class use it. The first time I actually got to use a lathe was when my neighbor purchased a ShopSmith multi-function machine back in the early 80’s. Turning that first spindle got me hooked but it was to be many years before I could afford to buy my first lathe. With that first lathe, a Rikon Mini, I taught myself how to turn pens and bottle stoppers and slowly learned some of the basics of bowl turning, which was what I really wanted to learn to do. In the fall 2010, when I knew that I might lose my job any month, I upgraded to a Jet 1642 and progressed in learning to turning larger diameter bowls and longer spindles. Recently I have started turning segmented bowls and have had great success with them, but I still enjoy turning where I started, with pens and bottle stoppers.
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by WVWA, a chapter of the American Association of WoodturnersReturn to the Member Galleries