A friend of mine is buying his wife a Rikon Mini for her 40th birthday. She turned on my Jet a while ago and was immediately hooked.
I bought her a starter set of P&N gouges and turned handles from locust (Honey? Moraine?). The wood is gorgeous, and some of them have chatoyance and some curl. The ferrules are 3/4" copper couplers cut in half.
The one on the far right was the prototype; I put my own P&N gouge in there. I thought the design was a little clunky and too big for her hands, so I made the rest slimmer and a little more flowing.
I learned that even starting with a 1/8" pilot hole and moving up in 1/16" increments, your holes can still end up off center. Next time I will drill the holes first, and use them to center. That's the way I was originally going to go, but I read someone else's procedure for making handles and they didn't do that.
-Joe