While I was hiking the AT, being constantly surrounded by trees, I decided I might want to try woodworking when I came home. (I was also inspired by Justinthetrees)
My sister Sarah was also intrested and I was a little intimidated to sign up for a class by myself, so we took a class together as a Christmas gift. In the class, we each made a face grain bowl out of cherry and an end grain bowl out of mahogony.
After that, I joined a local makerspace and made some other things. It took some time to find someone who could show me the basics of how to use the lathes at the makerspace and where all the good tools were amongst the clutter, but I eventually started making some more unique pieces there. I also learned how to use chucks on the lathe and how to use a bandsaw to cut my blanks from fogwood (found on ground wood) or scrap wood.
Here I’m turning a piece at the makerspace.
Above is a partially finished dish made from pecan fogwood. I think the rot in the center looks cool and I also decided to keep the live edge.
James came up with the silly idea of making a bagel plate that has a hole in the middle. I liked the idea and it seemed like a good way to celebrate our upcoming move to NYC, so I made it! The benefit of making plates over bowls is that I can use scrap wood left by other people in the makerspace without buying anything.
This is all the pieces I’ve made at the time of writing this post. In the back from left to right is the mahogony, pecan, and cherry and in front is the bagel plate.