After I arrived at my parents house (late, as usual) I realised I didn't have my camera. So no pictures. AGAIN. Sorry! My dad even made fun of me for having such a lame blog - apparently blogs are blah without pictures! Anyways, for the rest of the day my dad and I took a little field trip out to Woodcraft.
It would be safe to say that my dad and I got lost on the way to Woodcraft...but that would be a gross underestimate.
The purple dot is my parents home. The green is where we were planning to go. And the red is where we ended up.
After calling Woodcraft and determing my dad got the address very wrong and that we were on the other side of town, we ended up shopping at the location at the yellow dot.
What was only suppose to be a couple hour trip, took ALL DAY.
On the plus side, we had a good time. Which is probably what got us loss in the first place. Usually both my dad and I are excellent navigators. But all the over passes and under passes and loops threw off my sense of direction by a fair margin. And then add that to the fact that I wasn't paying much attention to where we were going - it's no wonder we got lost. I don't know what my dad's excuse is though. Old age?
When we left the house, my dad had entered the address into his phone - an HTC something or another by Verizon. Normally I LOVE Verizon, but the whole family hates this phone. And VZ Navigator? It's a total joke. If I would have been thinking I would have grabbed my hubby's Garmin out of his car before we left the house. Oh well.
So the address we were suppose to be going to was 11707 West Sam Houston Parkway South. Now if you don't enter that in EXACTLY right, you will end up on the other side of the planet, namely 11707 East Sam Houston Parkway North. Personally, I think all roads should be laid out on a grid system. None of this loop de loop nonsense. But what can you do?
After finally arriving at a Woodcraft (allbeit not the one we were aiming for) we spent about an hour or so browsing. I picked up some nice little micromesh pads for my super duper high gloss finished, and some good old CA glue. That's right - I'm finishing my pens with SUPER GLUE! My dad and I walked around the lumber part of Woodcraft for awhile and I was able to impress him with all the studying I did. Recognizing woods is very easy for me, almost second nature. I'm sure as I am exposed to more wood types it will become more difficult, but for now I can identify most of the more common exotics.
With our shopping done, and our tummys now grumbly, we headed for home (the cute little purple dot). After dinner dad, hubby, and I set up my lathe and admired it's size and power. I realised then why it was so cheap - it's not a variable speed lathe. Meaning I have to manually change the belts out to lower and increase my speed. Yuck. It seems easy enough to do - we read through the manual and went ahead and set it at the highest setting (seems to be the favored by penturners), but still a little time consuming. For now I guess I'll be changing it in between turning and finishing, but in the future I'd imagine only changing it after I have 5 or so pens ready to be finished.
And that brings me to my next point - I still have to wait for my mandrel. For those who don't know what a mandrel is, it's the thin metal rod that you mount on the lathe itself. When you get ready to turn a pen you slide the pen blank onto the mandrel and then attach the mandrel to the lathe. Later I plan on getting a set of heavy duty attachments (called live and dead centers) and some specially made bushings (the spacers used to judge the size of the pen you are turning). But for now, and for my first attempt, I still have to wait for my mandrel to get here with my starter set. =/
In the mean time I will try, once again, to take pictures of my family and my lathe.
Out of turn,
Sam
2 comments:
So the pen blank comes with a hole down the middle already?
Sounds very interesting.
Some of the blanks that I can purchase come with the hole predrilled. But since the size of the hole needed sometimes varies from style to style, they are generally sold without the hole. The blanks I'm recieving in my starter kit, for example, are already drilled since they are part of a huge set.
In the future, I will have to drill the holes myself with a drill press. Lucky for me, my dad already has one of these so all I will have to supply will be the appropriate size drill bit (but he might have those already too!).
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