I have finally turned a piece of wood in the new “Metal” lathe.  It’s one of those things that most people wouldn’t think of doing. “You turn wood in a wood lathe.”

 I took a quick picture so I could get this out of the way.

 Thanks for stopping by and enough of the lathe pictures already! 

In an effort to try to get something going tonight, I’ve just realized the journal thing is going to be a little stressful at first…     

This morning one of my projects was building a tool.  Lignum Vitae was my wood of choice for this tool so I was glad I’d kept some of the dregs around. The dregs amount to some stuff that has real pithy sapwood and was exposed at one time to termites.The wood was on the way to being thrown out. It wasn’t and I’m glad because I would have felt bad using good wood for this project. Notice the light colored wood (sapwood). There is very little heartwood here. 

Once the stuff started turning I remembered the first time I’d worked with the stuff almost thirty years ago.

Lignum Vitae has a high oil content and the oil is very aromatic. It’s a sweet smell that is much stronger then the smell teak has when you’re working it. The oil makes finishing Lignum Vitae very easy. Once the sanding is done, you take a hand full of the sawdust and press it against the piece like you would a rag. That polishes the wood to an almost mirror like satin finish. When I do a real project I’ll get a picture up that represents what can be done with this stuff.

Some of the good stuff waiting for another project. Solid heartwood 7 inches in diameter.

One astute reader wanted to know how many types of wood there are in the world. I won’t even attempt that considering that I’d have to be thinking about figurative wood also!