The turn of the screw...

Which in this case means the wood screw that holds the bowl-sized block of maple onto the lathe chuck. My fascination with woodturning continues.

I took two classes a couple of weekends ago: pen turning and bowl turning. The contrast between them is startling. When turning the wood to make a pen you use a proportionally small gouge. When turning a bowl you use a very large, very sharp bowl gouge. (This is not my hand or my bowl, by the way.) FIrst I shaped the outside of the bowl. Then I flipped it around, clamped the chuck around the foot (in wood parlance it's called the tenon) on the bottom, then hollowed the inside. The pile of shavings was immense.

In the end, I thought I did pretty well. It was round, it was even, and it looked like a bowl. My first bowl. I was ridiculously pleased.

I've done a bit of the other sort of turning this week too. Since Rhinebeck is coming up, I figured I'd better clear out at least one of the bags of fleece I bought last year. Finally completed: 127g and 720 yards of Persimmon Tree wool/mohair in "Autumn Leaves."