Cold afternoon in February

Hi Everyone,
Well, it's a very cold grey afternoon in the wood shop and what was going to be a long day working turned out to be a short day shivering and finally giving up and coming inside.

I did however make a couple of things. My mother in law asked me to make a darning egg for a friend of hers so I made one out of a piece of cherry:

This was a very rough piece of wood that had the bark still on it. It's interesting how wood can change so much when it's turned. The wood turning process really brings out all sorts of secrets in wood.

Over the holidays I bought some 3x3 cut offs of various types of wood milled from trees that fell in a storm last year. This lumber came from just ordinary trees, not trees that were cultivated specifically for their wood so the wood grain is not as straight or perfect as cultivated trees can be. The resulting wood is very pretty with all sorts of different colors and irregular grain.

I took a piece of ambrosia maple and made a rolling pin out of it to see what its working qualities are and I wasn't disappointed:

The photo doesn't do it justice. Most of my pins are made from baseball bat lumber and they are very uniform in appearance but this one has a lovely, country look to it and I like it very much.


I'll be back soon with some photos of the new drill press!

VW