‘Flat’tery will get you somewhere.

Thursday night I had attempted to figure out why our wireless router was dropping Lydia from Facebook. Needless to say, this was something that had to be solved before the world came to a screeching halt, flinging mankind into the cosmos, so I took a stab at it. With the saying 'No good deed goes unpunished' proving it's unwavering truth; I somehow killed the laptops wifi signal. Lydia makes it about 30 minutes before the hunger begins. The Facebook hunger. She needs a fix and needs is bad. Reduced to sitting in a chair, in front of an actual monitor and full keyboard and mouse, she sits.

Friday we are luckily occupied with school/work and an evening on the town, so she's able to cope with the withdrawal symptoms.

Saturday Raymond calls me. His wife is entertaining that evening which leaves him free to play in the shop. It's a rainy, nasty day but the shop is enclosed, room enough for two people, only a small amount of waltzing required if we need to move around. Lydia gives me the thumbs up so long as I take on hair washing duty, and I'm out the door.

Raymond was commissioned to turn a bowl from someone using what is called by some people 'legacy wood'. It's a piece of wood with a story behind it. This was a board of walnut that was taken from a family's land, brought to SC, then stored for 10 years or so. While not the first time I'd seen a flat edged bowl, it was the first time I had seen someone make one from scratch. When finished, it was a nice looking piece and I'm sure the customer will be more than happy with it.



Here's a note about that photo. That piece of walnut is spinning around 600 revolutions per minute. That's about 10 per second. It's got four corners. That's a corner spinning past a given point at about 40 times per second. Now, notice the dark circular outer edge of the bowl? That's not outer edge, that's actually the inner edge. What you can't see is another inch or two beyond that edge. It's moving so fast that it's basically invisible. When turning these you have to be VERY mindful of where your hands are. In a collision of your finger bones and dried wood at 600 RPM, there will be a clear winner and a clear loser.

He was also good enough to send me away with a hollowing tool he made. Recently he had made a larger one and this one would be more than enough for my mini lathe. I'm looking forward to testing it out, now I just need to come across come free time and decent weather. Wonder which will come first?