Hiatus

I took a couple of days off from building the table to make some items for a family auction! Every year my mom’s side of the family has a reunion in West Virginia. There’s an old farm house that my mom’s grandparents owned and that has been in the family ever since. All of the descendants (the grandparents had 13 kids!) partly own it now and take care of the upkeep. They collect donations from the family each year and do some maintenance around the house. As part of that, we have an auction at the reunion with homemade stuff, and all of the money goes towards the house.

There was an old oak tree in the backyard with a tire swing, and swinging there was always a fond memory of the reunion. The tree finally rotted and fell over, but I was able to save a bunch of logs from it around a decade ago. Each year I use a little of it to make some items for the auction. Last year I made a couple of knife handles. This year I pulled out my lathe and turned a bunch of stuff: two pens, a salt and pepper shaker set, a fan pull, a bottle opener, and a screwdriver:

I hadn’t used my lathe in almost a decade, but everything came out great! Got to do some different finishes as well: CA glue for the pens, beeswax for the shakers, and mineral oil and polish for everything else.