A Goblet

Hi all,
After having an almighty catch on the lathe, a catch is when the tool digs into the wood and either damages it, throws the wood across the room or both. Anyway, I was about to make another lidded box, the fourth in total since I took up woodturning. Here's a picture of the first 3.

The problem was that after sorting out the catch, which meant the wood had to be smoothed out again, and after that there simple wasn't enough diameter left to make a decent box.

You can see in the picture above how much damage was inflicted on the wood. I didn't want to throw a good piece of wood away, so I decided to have a go at making a goblet. It wouldn't be a thin stemmed goblet like the ones seen on youtube of which this is a great example of the wood turners skill.

There are two reasons why mine wouldn't look like the one in the example. Firstly, I have only just started wood turning and can only dream of having the skills that are required to make such an item. Secondly, call me a bit of a miser if you want, but it seems to me to be a waste of good wood. I purchased the lathe turn pieces of wood into nicer looking pieces of wood, I didn't buy it to just turn wood into shavings.

An hobby where you pay good money for a piece of timber 2 inches square, then shave it down to the size of a drinking straw just to prove you can do it is a strange things to do. Mind you, if you just want to convert money into wood shavings it is a good way to go.

Does it sound like I'm jealous? Well perhaps I am, but I'm happy enough with my progress so far. Here's my fat stemmed goblet, lovingly turned from the piece of mahogany on which I had the catch.

 Perhaps it could have been a bit thinner, but after the catch my confidence was low.

Once the goblet was finished it was time to see if I could source some lighter wood so that I could do some pyrography on it. Now you might think it would be easy to source some decent light coloured wood turning blanks in my native Staffordshire but you would be wrong. I think that it is ironic that Staffordshire is billed as, "The Creative County" when nothing could be further from the truth. To get some wood, I would have to go to Derbyshire, Warwickshire or Shropshire/Wales border so that is what I did. The shop was great and I am more than pleased with the results of my trip, which I will relate in my next post.