Category Archives: Wood Turning

A few years ago, I turned a 34″ long French rolling pin for my wife.  Every year at Christmas time, she makes a traditional Slovenian pastry called potica.  She got the recipe from my aunt.  Making potica involves stretching dough out paper thin over the entire 5′ by 3′ kitchen table.  She tried using her normal marble rolling pin, but this didn’t work very well.  She thought that a French tapered pin may work better, and a really long one may work even better.  So I got a 3′ long piece of 2″ x 2″ purpleheart, and turned it for her.

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We were decorating for a dinner at church, and my wife wanted some candle holders for some pillar candles.  We found this one at a local store.  After looking at it, I realized I could turn a pair of them pretty easily.

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I’d like to thank Angelo, who, in response to my Homemade Jumbo Jaws article, sent me a picture of some jaws he made out of corian. These look awesome!

These seem to be much more stable than plywood jaws.  Thanks for sharing, Angelo!

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For some time I’ve wanted an easier way of reverse mounting a bowl for finishing the bottom, and have seen several options. Seeing that you can build several of these options, I knew that was the route I would take, as I could not justify spending around 100 bucks for a set of jaws.

I’ve considered the Longworth chuck and the donut chuck, but recently I saw some homemade jumbo jaws for a scroll chuck, and thought I could make a set of these for my Talon chuck.

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Just about a year ago, Marisa got me a box turning class at Woodcraft in Indianapolis. Now I’ve been turning for about 10 years now, but it’s all been self taught, and learning some new techniques from a pro would probably be a good thing. Well, it was.

The class was taught by a professional turner named Jim Dupler. I learned a lot of good information, and made this box in the two day class.

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Recently I made a small hollow form, using my Mini Easy Finisher to do the hollowing. But with only 4 inches of bar, I couldn’t hollow very deep. I started looking for a new hollowing tool, but they are all around $100.

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