I was asked a while back to turn a salt shaker for a friend to match a peppermill he already had.
Peppermill to copy.
Finished Salt shaker.
He gave me a blank to turn the shaker out of, it was a Baseball Bat. I traced and measured diameters and gave him the mill back. Finally 6 months later I got around to it
. I had talked with him and he was in no rush. I turned it Christmas day on my new toy, the beads are not as pronounced as I would like though. As I was boring the center hole it only went about 1″ and then I was cutting air. About 4 inches of the blank was hollow! Man did I luck out on where I cut the 2 ends to be. So I was worried I would cut into the cavity as I shaped the shaker.
I bought the top from Craftsupplies, but did not want to use the rubber bung. I know how overtime they can end up not fitting well, so I wanted to seal it up good. I decided to cut the top off of a water bottle I had and try epoxying it into the bottom and it worked quite well.
Here is the first bowl I turned on the new PM 3520. It is Maple burl about 5 inches by 2.5 inches and wall thickness of 3/16″. I finished it with 3 coats of Tung oil then Beall buffed it. When I brought it in to show LOML she said don’t you have something bigger to turn, you bought that lathe that can turn 20″ and this is what you bring me! I had to give it a good test run before digging in.
I took advantage of the WMH Black Friday sale to make the big plunge and upgrade from my 1949 Shopsmith to the Powermatic 3520b (Mustard Monster). It arrived on Tuesday Dec. 15th and I got it assembled that night and just made a few chips late that evening. The following Friday I finally got to have some fun. I made a good mess turning a NE apple bowl (man it smells good while turning!).
I only had enough time to rough out a spindle before heading to bed.
Just to show the comparison between the shopsmith and the Mustard Monster.
The fun mess from rough turning the apple bowl.
A co-worker asked me to turn some bottle stoppers for Christmas, so this is what I turned while waiting for the lacquer to cure on the Christmas Peppermills.
From left to right: Curly Western Maple, Spalted Sweet Gum, Purpleheart/Maple/Veneer, Sweet Gum, Cocobolo, Spalted Sweet Gum, and Koa.
They are all finished with Deft rattle can lacquer, Beall buffed and finished with Ren wax.
It has been a busy couple of months. I haven’t had time to play with the pictures I took of the Christmas items I made until now. Here are 2 peppermills I made for my sister-in-laws. I wanted to do a different shape than the one I had been making so I went with this shape. Kind of plain (I know they kinda look like bowling pins
), but I think the simple curves work well with the laminated Purpleheart/Maple/Dyed black veneer. They are about 8″ tall, 3″ wide and are finished with several coats of precatalyzed lacquer. Wet sanded and Beal buffed then buffed with Ren wax. I also made the bases to go along with the mills. I think I will make these with all my mills as kind of my signature.
I was able to line up the bases pretty well with this pair of mills. Did a pretty good job duplicating the first one, just some slight differences.
Mill #117
Mill #118
