A little gloat

[John Hart]

Ok...this may not seem like much...But it is major to me.

I took a turning vacation.

Yep....for at least 5 years, all my vacation time has been spent doing stuff for other people, fixing cars, fixing the house, cutting grass, running errands...you name it..

So I took three days and wrapped them around memorial day and I have 6 full days of turning.

Today was the first. I started at 7:00am and I just came in for food. I blew up two pieces....one hit me in the face, and YES...I was wearing my faceshield. I'm almost done with another piece (if I don't blow it up).

The lacquer is flowing....the lathe is spinning...13 hours of relaxful vortexical bliss

Gee...I think I'll do it again tomorrow!!!

[charlie knighton]

cool, great vacation, need picture of pieces

i took that approach a couple years ago, i had a big piece of hackberry, dry hackberry
going to make a big bowl, i wasn't turning 5 minutes, broke the tool rest, it went sideways of me, called company and their service dept did get me another tool rest in 2 days, i did not finish that hackberry piece til i bought another lathe, and that was the first piece on it

not much of picture

[Steve Schlumpf]

John - Congrats on your turning vacation! Hope you are able to create lots of masterpieces! Do you have the main door open to ventilate the lacquer fumes? Don't need no Salvidor Dali type turnings.... then again - could be cool!

Have fun! Looking forward to seeing what you create!

[Pete Jordan]

Enjoy Big Fella!

[Greg Just]

Sounds like a great vacation - I'm hoping to get a few hours of turning time this weekend as I have not turned anything in about a week. Enjoy and post pics of your vacation creations!

[Jim Burr]

Yipee!!! More lacquer for the vacation boy!!!

[John Keeton]

John, I am proud of you!! Great plan and I hope it is relaxing for you as well as productive. I hope to do the same for the better part of the weekend, but tomorrow looks shot for the most part.

[John Hart]

Ok...Let's do pics!!!

Started the morning with coffee and nice weather. The deer were right outside my window here, so I watched them for a while...had my coffee...email...relaxing. Ahhhhh
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Then I headed out to the shop and disappeared for the day.....Ahhhhhh

Got hit by some big storms again, but I didn't care. The power never went out so I just enjoyed the power of mother nature.

Oh...and here are the blowups. The first one is a hollow form that I'm vasing up. The body is Lychee...a gift from David Keller. Not a horrible blowup. I will remount this and fix her up.
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This next one is the one that hit me in the face. It was going to be a single piece walnut pedestal vase. I was spinning at about 1500 and putting the final touches on the base of the body after hollowing. I had it between centers at the time. I had my face down real close and making the cut with the skew. It caught. WHAM!!
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Here's what I'm working on now. It's a Walnut, Curly Maple, and Teak vase. All the hollowing is done. I just have to finish up the pedestal and hollow the mouth.
Teak sticks to EVERYTHING.....oh...except the faceshield. Kinda wierd.
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So that's it for today.

[Greg Just]

Those deer sure are watching you.

[David DeCristoforo]

I'm starting to feel like I should wear a face shield just to read the forum posts anymore...

[Baxter Smith]

Enjoy your turning time! Those blown up hf's are about as attractive as those scruffy Ohio deer.

[David E Keller]

Congrats on the 'me time'... That's the best way to recharge the ole batteries IMO. I hope you enjoyed turning the lychee... I think it's pretty cool stuff. I'm hoping to log a miniature version of your turncation over the next few days.

[Michael James]

Good plan. Enjoy every minute of it!
mj

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Congrats John....you have earned some turning time. Enjoy it.

[Curt Fuller]

If you actually pull it off, even if you actually get to spend half that time turning, I want to see a tutorial on how you did it! In the mean time, let the shavings fly!