Quick lathe project for a housewarming

[Tyer]

This is my first post on the forums. I'm a new convert to ShopSmith tools after buying a whole Mark V shop full for a great price at an auction. The tools are much more solid than I expected, and as a result I sold (or gave away) most of the other power tools I'd accumulated. The best part, though, seems to be the active and friendly community that's grown around these tools over the decades.

Some friends just bought a (truly beautiful) new house, and of course it was just a couple of days before their housewarming party that my wife and I realized that we didn't have suitable gift for them. I had a few blocks of different woods that I'd laminated up left over from a Nixie tube clock, so I bandsawed out a rough blank and turned up a salt cellar.

SaltCellar - Open (Scaled).jpg (386.15 KiB) Viewed 6033 times

For a finish, I used "Wood Turners Finish" from General Finish, that I picked up at the local WoodCraft store; I love this stuff! It's incredibly easy and dries almost instantaneously - four coats took less than an hour.

One of the layers is padouk, which has a very vivid orange-red color. Unfortunately, the dust generated while sanding (on the lathe) migrated a bit into one of the adjoining poplar layers and stained it a bit; I didn't notice until the first coat of finish, so I couldn't do anything about it.

Still, it turned out all right I think, considering that this is the first time I've turned anything in around 40 years. (When I was a kid, my parents bought me a remarkably ShopSmith-like tool, by ToastMaster of all companies, that included a lathe. I learned a lot on that, including how to turn almost anything with just a skew chisel, since that's all I had.)

ToastMaster.jpg (76.21 KiB) Viewed 6033 times

I'm looking forward to a lot more fun with this remarkable set of tools!
~~
Mark

[Hobbyman2]

nice job

[algale]

Nice work on the salt cellar. When I bought my Shopsmith I also was surprised at just how good the all the tools/functions were and I sold off my contractor table saw. And this community is very good.

[charlese]

Welcome to the forum, Mark!

Thank you for your very interesting first post. Never knew about the multi-tool made by Mcgraw-Edison. The ToastMaster name is indeed not an obvious description of the tool. We used to have a ToastMaster, but it was only for toasting. When struggling through school on the GI bill, we made many grilled cheese sandwiches with it.

Nice job on your salt cellar gift. Also it is pretty darn neat that you have developed those skill with a skew! I am envious!