Lathe Induction & Whisk Handle update

In order to complete the Whisk handle I had drawn up the week before, I needed to learn how to turn wood on the lathe. Turning is something I have always found fascinating and had always wanted to try but I just never had an opportunity to actually live out this dream. The technicians in the wood shop were incredibly helpful and gave me a 1 on 1 induction to the lathe, using scrap to learn how all of the different turning chisels work and what their functions were. I absolutely love the immediate feedback you get from the wood when turning. There is something just soothing to me about taking a square piece of wood, turning it into a cylinder, and then shaping the desired shape. I truly got lost in the activity and became so focused that there could have been a fire behind me and I would not have noticed.

Once I had played with all of the tools and felt comfortable getting started on the whisk handle, I found an old bed leg made from beech wood in the wood shop scraps and cut a piece down to size that would suffice for my handle design. After turning the square piece into a cylinder, I drilled the hole for the whisk to fit into. I then used the drawing as a guide to shape the handle, slowly turning the old bed leg into my repurposed handle. I was kind of eye balling the shape and length of the handle, which I knew was not very accurate. However, the wood shop closing in an hour and I felt rushed. I later found out that you can mark the desired dimensions on the wood while the lathe is spinning and use those marks as guides. Even though I eye balled the dimensions, it still turned out to my liking. In the future, I will use the marking method and attempt to be more accurate with the dimensions. For the diameter of the handle, I used a calliper to measure the width of the design and then matched that on the wood itself. So the diameter of the handle was fairly accurate to what I had drawn. I also found out that I used the “incorrect” turning chisels for shaping the handle. I put incorrect in parenthesis because there’s technically not a wrong tool to use as long as it comes out the way you want it.. However, I realised that I should have used the skew chisel to form a consistent shape for the handle. I’ll use the skew chisel for it’s intended use in the future. I also realised that I should have sanded the handle while it was spinning on the lathe, however I cut the handle off before I had sanded it. Sanding it while it was on the lathe would have been much easier than hand sanding it after the fact. I just did not know I could sand it while it was on the lathe until after I had cut it off.