I used to do a lot of small turnings, mostly pens and pipe tampers, but ran out of time a while ago. My shop has been mostly dormant for many years, except for little things like cutting a couple spacers for the windshield on my bike. But after my return to wet shaving, I started thinking about turning again. Then I bought one of Rudy Vey's surplus handles and thought, "OK, I gotta make a brush."
So I went downstairs to the Scary Basement, which is pretty well equipped for a little job like this ... two lathes (a small wood lathe and a Taig Micro Lathe), a bandsaw, drill press, plenty of wood and metal, even the odd chunk of acrylic. And all I'm trying to do is take a block of material, round it out, drill a hole, shape it, sand it, and finish it up. How hard could that be, even for someone who hasn't wielded a gouge in five or six years?
Answer: hard. Really hard. Truly
difficult.
OK, maybe I exaggerate, but this effort reminded why I hate acrylic. People like Rudy make it look easy, and with passage of the years, I'd forgotten how much patience it takes to get a really clean result. This one has a couple small turning marks that I should've taken the extra time to clean up, but my wife was calling, we had a 7:00 dinner reservation, and there was a big plate of Veal Sorrento with my name on it. So I polished it up, epoxied the knot, and headed off to eat way too much Italian food.
Here's the end result (no bloom, and the glue is still curing):
The material is a bottle stopper blank I had lying around (from Penn State Industries, I think). The knot is a 24mm silvertip from Larry at Whipped Dog, set somewhere around 47mm. It's the same knot I had set in the handle I bought from Rudy, and is performing nicely though it shed quite a bit at the beginning. We'll see how this one goes.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I have a few more knots, so this may not be my last brush. The next project, though, is likely to be a razor handle made from assorted bits of stainless steel and whatever pen blank looks promising. I've got most of the metal pieces cut and just haven't decided what shape seems promising, though I'm leaning toward a barber pole type of thing.
So I went downstairs to the Scary Basement, which is pretty well equipped for a little job like this ... two lathes (a small wood lathe and a Taig Micro Lathe), a bandsaw, drill press, plenty of wood and metal, even the odd chunk of acrylic. And all I'm trying to do is take a block of material, round it out, drill a hole, shape it, sand it, and finish it up. How hard could that be, even for someone who hasn't wielded a gouge in five or six years?
Answer: hard. Really hard. Truly
difficult.OK, maybe I exaggerate, but this effort reminded why I hate acrylic. People like Rudy make it look easy, and with passage of the years, I'd forgotten how much patience it takes to get a really clean result. This one has a couple small turning marks that I should've taken the extra time to clean up, but my wife was calling, we had a 7:00 dinner reservation, and there was a big plate of Veal Sorrento with my name on it. So I polished it up, epoxied the knot, and headed off to eat way too much Italian food.
Here's the end result (no bloom, and the glue is still curing):
The material is a bottle stopper blank I had lying around (from Penn State Industries, I think). The knot is a 24mm silvertip from Larry at Whipped Dog, set somewhere around 47mm. It's the same knot I had set in the handle I bought from Rudy, and is performing nicely though it shed quite a bit at the beginning. We'll see how this one goes.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I have a few more knots, so this may not be my last brush. The next project, though, is likely to be a razor handle made from assorted bits of stainless steel and whatever pen blank looks promising. I've got most of the metal pieces cut and just haven't decided what shape seems promising, though I'm leaning toward a barber pole type of thing.
