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Small Scale Inexpensive Solar Kiln

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One of the great things about woodturning is the ability to use free wood that you can find or harvest yourself rather than relying on store bought lumber. Finding logs on the side of the road or taking down a tree yourself is a great way to not only save money, but also gives you access to woods not normally available in stores.  Once you have the wood to turn, the issue becomes how to dry it. Whether you're roughing out bowls to then dry and finish turn at a later date, or milling up spindle blanks, or even just drying full bowl blanks, eventually the wood needs to fully dry before a piece can be finished. If you have a lot of time, this isn't an issue, but if you're impatient, or especially if you're trying to get items finished to give as gifts or sell, waiting months or years isn't a great option. There are many different ways to speed up the drying process, from light bulb powered drying boxes and kilns, to microwaving individual bowl blanks, but the one that ...
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Milling & Prepping Blanks without a Band Saw

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When I started to get more serious about starting wood turning, I did some research on what tools I'd need to purchase. I knew I would need the lathe and the various gouges/ chisels, and a bench grinder to sharpen those gouges and chisels. The last major tools I read about were a band saw and chainsaw. A chainsaw is used to roughly mill up logs, while the band saw was supposed to be what you needed to turn the logs into smaller and more manageable blanks you can actually mount on the lathe. From what I could find, the band saw was really more of a necessity if you wanted to turn logs and wood other than prepared blanks from a store. I already had a chainsaw, a tiny little 14" electric that the previous owners of my house left for us when they moved out, and given the size of logs and blanks I wanted to turn, I was looking at a minimum of $600 for a band saw. I didn't feel like spending that much on yet another tool, so I figured I'd forgo the band saw, and do all of my...
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Spalted Ash Green Turned Bowl

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My brother in law and I were walking through the woods on my in-laws farm in Indiana, looking for some wood I could use for turning. The emerald ash borer has done quite a bit of damage in that area, and we found a dead ash tree still standing, around 10" diameter, perfect to take down and make some bowls. We took the tree down, cut it into 4' lengths, and loaded it up in my car. As I was milling up the logs into bowl blanks with the chainsaw back in Chicagoland, I found some really nice spalting throughout the wood, which was surprising given the tree was still standing, not laying on the ground. Spalting is a discoloration of wood caused by various fungi, many times leading to some nice black lines throughout a piece of wood, and it's pretty common on wood left on the ground for any extended period of time.  I was able to get 14 bowl blanks from that one small tree, 9 were rough turned and left to dry before turning again to final dimension. 5 bowls I turned green, turni...
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Making Useful Items from Reclaimed Woods

When my wife and I first moved into our house in 2017, there was a massive buckthorn tree in the backyard. Buckthorn is an extremely invasive shrub in the Midwest, and we knew we were going to remove it, but once we cut ours down, I realized the wood was gorgeous. I couldn't bring myself to burn such beautiful wood, and I had been doing woodworking for years so I wanted to create something out of it, but I didn't know how to go from an assortment of small logs to any finished product.  I started looking up ways to use logs and other ‘unwanted’ wood, and quickly realized a lathe was the way to go. Some of best wood for turning is logs and offcuts that you find and salvage, not wood purchased from a lumberyard. You can literally go from a log, to a finished, functional piece in less than an hour (depending on what you're making). Most importantly for me, I'm able to use wood that is destined for bonfires, wood chippers, or just being left to rot, and turn it into somethin...
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