Welcome to my website
My dad is one of the finest duck carvers in the nation. One time I went to the wood store with him and I saw a little pen kit which was basically all the parts to a pen except the outside of the pen which you make out of wood, or as I learned later out of all kinds of stuff but you turn it on a lathe. This interested me but I didn't have a lathe and didn't have money for one or a shop to put one in. Later that summer I was at the Utah Summer Fair and came across a booth where someone was selling a setup by Zyliss that clamped onto a table. It was something that I could afford and put on the work bench in the garage and it was powered by a drill. I was fortunate enough to find a drill at Sears that I could turn on and it would run on it's own and had a wheel on the trigger that adjusted the speed so it worked very well for a small lathe. I even made a small baseball bat at one time in addition to all the pens and keychains. It was a lot of fun for a little while.
Eventually my dad got a real lathe.
That has allowed me to venture beyond small projects like pens and keychains and into bowls and candlestick holders. I like these projects because they allow for a a large degree of freedom in design. I know I do a lot of things differently than an experienced turner would, especially those old guys in their shops with their big lathes that have been turning wood for decades - they'd probably have a fit if they saw me using some of the techniques I use instead of the ones they teach but I get along okay. Every project typically turns into a change of my original idea or plan by I make do and come up with something usually. The pens are mostly acryllic there is one that's a corn cob a few different types of wood, I've also experimented with deer antler, Indian Water Buffalo Horn, and rattle snake skin incased in acryllic. Most of the pens are roller ball style but some are click, twist and even fountain pens.
That lathe was fine for those objects but I've come to the point of wanting to do bigger things like bowls, vases, and most of all Hallow Forms. This lathe wasn't good enough to allow me to get as precise as I want to be. I'm now in a waiting game trying to save money for a real lathe designed heavy enough for super precision and a place to put it. One day...
