As Christmas gifts I made peppermills for everyone this year. I made four sets of salt and pepper mills from cocobolo, katalox, guapanillo, and bocote. Plus one extra pepper mill from bloodwood. I had planned on five sets, but stuck the bit in the Indian Rosewood. Forgive me for the lack of pics, I did not want to spoil the gifts and was not finished with them until about one hour before I needed to leave for Dallas.
Lessons learned from this project include chucking, drilling and finishing. With this project I learned very quickly how valuable multiple chucks and multiple jaws for those chucks can be. I used the #2 jaws on my Oneway Stronghold and the long nose pin jaws on my SuperNova2. I also try to minimize the amount of rechucking that I do. As far as drilling goes, I believe that a pilot hole drilled on the lathe then finished out on the drill press. I feel like the drilling is easier and results are more accurate. And yes you can really can drill a bit stuck... so stuck that you have to turn the waste wood away to recover it. I also discovered that oil finishes do not dry in a cold shop with dense woods. The finished stayed very sticky using Danish oil. Then I tried Teak oil, still sticky, Tung oil and was still sticky. I cleaned all the previous finishes with mineral spirits and alcohol. Polyurethane would not even work. Finally I used some blonde shellac to get a clean glossy finish.
I have been working on cleaning up the shop lately, with the help of my father-in-law. We got a fair bit accomplished today.
To relax this evening I turned a 12" maple baseball bat for my 13 month old nephew. I wonder how long it will take for him to learn how to whop the dog with it.... Pictures to come.
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