Ryans First Lathe

Just the bottom shelf to fit

At Last!

Ryan is one of our junior members attending our Saturday club, he was among the first to attend, in fact he was here before any of the others? The reason being they got the date mixed up and arrived at the hall 1 week early, so true to say he was here before any of us!

So being enthusiastic it wasn't long before he wanted a lathe at home, it was agreed he would have the donated lathe I had still boxed in my workshop, but what about a bench? Well to cut a long story short last Saturday & Sunday both Ryan & Rob another junior member spent time at my place building a bench, first we got some old 3" x 2" slightly bent and stained and some 4" x 3" sawn from a pallet and set up my planner, very soon we had rails and post's all square and clean ready to mark out.

The boys set out the legs for the mortises and we machined those, then the rails where marked, while I cut down the tenon they cut the shoulders, a little work with a shoulder plane and they fitted just right. So with all the components fitting I asked the question, "do we glue and cramp and hope it all fits or do we do a dry run, immediately Rob said "dry run" it was encouraging to get a constructive answer especially as the day was getting on. It went together very well so the gluing came next, all done in the right order and we kept ourselves busy each time we cramped while the glue set, 5 minutes, the wonders of science aye, not a steel fixing in site.

When it was all glued the bench was carried up to my house and placed in the kitchen, I got some odd looks from you know who when she came home! Well where else could it go? It wouldn't go through the narrow door to my workshop. Next morning bright and early we temporarily fitted the new piece of kitchen worktop and took a trip in my van over the other side of Portsdown hill to my son's garage (my store) and cut a bit of board for the lower shelf, we stopped on top of the hill to look at the view and take some pictures, it was a beautiful day.

Back home we fitted the shelf, then we/Ryan ran the router round to arris the edges of the rails and posts, now its looking posh, sanding was next then a test with some stains and varnishes, once we decided what to do I flooded the timber with varnish, shortly after the boys wiped it dry, job done. The top now screwed on it was time for the lathe, now we are excited, with all three of us fiddling around with various parts it wasn't long before it was ready to go, a short length of 2" x 2" was placed between centres and we switched on. BANG, no not really, it was fine and it wasn't not long before Ryan was roughing down, shortly after that his parents came and it was loaded into the estate car and I never saw them again, sorry about that last bit, it just seemed to flow right into it somehow. It's been a couple of days and I haven't heard anything so I guess everything is ok.

So with Ryan gone it was down to Rob and I to sweep up and put the tools away, Rob worked hard this weekend and because it wasn't his bench he helped build we set to my lathe and turned a bowl, he was well pleased and with everything put away I ran him home. All in all a brilliant weekend and I'm sure the boys thought the same. So that's the first of our juniors with a lathe at home which was always part of the original idea, we the club will do our best to help these young turners, turning between meetings is important to all turners. Once Ryan finds a better lathe we will have that one back for somebody else to use and of coarse I expect that'll mean another bench, and off we go again. So it just remains for me to thank Ryan & Rob for behaving them selves and Heather for doing a bit of lunch for Rob, and there goes another quiet weekend?

Rob is hoping to go to Highbury College doing carpentry so this was a useful project for him to work on.