Thread: Loving Learning my Lathe

Well 2 years after making my first brush out of a pre-turned spindle I bought at Menards I finally have acquired a lathe. Its an old Craftsman lathe with the manual it came with being printed in 1972. It works well and the previous owner took good care of it. I purchased it almost exclusively for the purpose of turning shaving brush handles, I'm not terribly handy and would not consider myself to be a woodworker in any sense of the term. I got her set up and bought some turning tools and various blanks and other associated items and finally tried my hand at turning some brush handles. After about a dozen practice runs on some old pine I had laying around I bought a few nice pieces of wood and decided to have a real go at it. So here are the results of the first few!



I turned this first one out of some Olive wood and was rather conservative with the shaping.



This second one I turned out of Purpleheart wood. It turned brown when I was turning it but after letting it sit in the sun (or what little daylight we have through the clouds here in Wisconsin) for a couple days and it returned to its beautiful purple color.

I have turned a third also out of purpleheart wood but im waiting for it to turn back to purple before I post pics of it. Turning these handles is more fun than I could have imagined. I cant wait to start knotting and using these brushes!