Heartwarming on a Frigid Weekend

Over the past year I’ve been tinkering with a fine old lathe my pal MikeM gave me some time ago, most recently giving it some workouts in preparation for turning a bunch of spindles, work I was supposed to do the afternoon I broke my arm.  In the past fortnight or so I’ve been able to return to the shop and when Daughter the Younger mentioned that she would like to learn to turn a bowl during her brief visit last weekend I was thrilled.  It turned out to be a wondrous time for us working together, and I hope it will be the foundation for a lot more projects together.

I had just the right piece of wood for her to use, a section of a plum tree from our old house where she grew up and still lives.  I made a small face plate for the project and mounted the chunk of log to it, and standing just over her shoulder gave instructions on the art form.

Although the lathe is set up for someone my height she settled in comfortably, and took to turning like a natural.  As expected she was very cautious but found her groove early on.  The only real downside to the session was that the lathe is in an unheated part of the barn, and the temperatures were in the mid-teens.

As soon as she was done shaping the outside we flipped it around so that the foot was in the bowl-turning chuck and she knocked out the inside as well.

I’ll show her how to fill the natural cracks in the bowl with pewter when we resume the project at some point in the future.  But for now she’ll have it at home, probably holding nuts.  Plus, I’ve got another nearly identical piece of the same plum log for her to turn another one.

It was a very chilly time but my heart was warmed clear through.