With all the woodworking I’ve done over the years I never had any real interest in woodturning. It was something that just never appealed to me. I don’t know why. I never really thought about it.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was moving into an apartment and was going to put his lathe in storage. He asked if I wanted to borrow it. “Sure, why not?”, I said. Just because I wasn’t interested in turning didn’t mean that I would turn down an offer to have a new tool around.

He delivered it one afternoon and gave me a quick lesson on how it worked. After he left I tried turning a piece and it was a ‘gawd awful’ attempt at a simple rounding. Over the next couple of years I made the occasional attempt again. It never amounted to much though, but with a lot (A LOT!) of sanding I was able to create a few candle holders, or at least that’s what I called them.

One day last summer I was at a carving buddy of mine and he was turning a pen. After an hour or so he had crafted a fine wooden pen made from an exotic hardwood. I was amazed! Here was something I could get into!

I was lucky enough to find a used Delta Midi-Lathe with the Oneway chuck system for a pretty good price. It also came with a bunch of pen kits, a few tools and other accessories.

Here are a few pens I recently turned recently… er’… reluctantly…

Back to the shop…