Reply To: Hello Bob & everyone else here, new member

[cazclocker]

Thanks for the very kind words, Bob. As far as the downloads on my website, I try to feature articles that are useful and stay away from fluff. The Shellac 101 and Hide Glue 101 have been kind of floating around on the NAWCC forum for years, but I finally got busy and copy-and-pasted the whole darned things into simple Word documents. I hope they expand your knowledge a little!

Anyway, about 15 minutes ago I finished watching the ‘learn to turn” lesson #2 in its entirety. Dang Bob, your stuff is not just some amateur with a camera – you’ve got some production values! But mainly I feel motivated and capable of starting to turn a little bit of raw brass stock. Granted, I’m still putting together my little rig but after I secure a motor & belting, some collets, and a few gravers, I actually don’t feel quite as intimidated as I did before. What I like is how you lay out some basic tooling like the magic center finder, flags, runners, etc., as first projects on a watchmaker’s lathe. I like that – I can learn on tooling that I will use in the future. If I mess up, it’s only my own stuff!

Yeah, I got the lathe at a little bitty flea market in Arizona from a guy who I have bought some nice stuff from before. Last summer I bought a set of tiny hard white Arkansa stones – they were small, barely 4″ long and quite odd shapes. Glad I got ’em. A month later he had a couple of larger Arkansas stones – one black, one white. They were both in wood cases, and were clearly quite old but excellent shape. $30.00 each – how could I pass ’em up? Bargains rock!

OK, see you later,