DuPage River Woodworks

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 ...

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...