Mary Ostler

I have a commission to make 60 spools up for a local merchant that deals with dyed textile goods. She bought a few when I was merchanting last fall, but wanted a slew more. Since then my original source of head scratching cheap dogwood billets has disappeared. I am now using scrap Cherry and Walnut [...]

By Request: How I convert my electric lathe to a functioning pole lathe.
I am lucky enough to have a decent size shop, and even luckier (mis-fortunate) to have inherited a lot of old tools. The decent size shop seems pretty small when all the tools are taking up every corner. Hence I have no room to have [...]

Well thank goodness that is done. The seat is finished and ready to go. I still have to make a table top, but their is no rush on that as the chair is the present.

Weaving the seat with paper rush was harder than I thought ti would be. The top side looks really nice, but [...]

The finish line is in sight.  All I have left is a little bit of light sanding (where the clamps where used) a once over with more wipe-on poly urethane, and weave the seat. My mom asked if I was making any thing for her this year. I couldn’t help myself but burst into laughter.

This [...]

The Long an plodding road continues with Emily’s Highchair. I am getting tired. I will be glad when I finally get to finishing this chair. I am actually rather excited about doing the reed seat on the chair.

The arms are shape kind of like an exclamation point. I walked around the house menacing people with the club.

The [...]

A little more done on the Highchair. It would have been more, but I was so cold I realized I was starting to shake while using the lathe. Not good.

I cut a board down to squared spindles. The four spindles that will have the reed seating strung over are boring 3/4″ dowels.

The lower spindles that circle the [...]

Got a bit more done on the highchair.

The barley twist and fluting is finally finished. Its a pretty good match, although the foot profile is different from the front to back legs. Once they are not so close to each other, it will hardly be noticeable.

This was the most difficult part so far. Trying to figure [...]

The front legs are almost done.Some light sanding and cutting the pivot waste down and its time to move on to the longer back legs.

The hardest part was making sure it was dead center even. If it was off even a little the squared section would be out of wack.

With Christmas sneaking up fast, I have been forced to start working on presents. First up is Emily’s first birthday/christmas present. I had originally wanted to make her a rocking animal. Leland got a super cool rocking goat for his first birthday, but the idea kind of got nixed on me. I was told that [...]

Baroness’ Birthday tourney took place yesterday. It was a smallish event, but still covered all the basics. Rapier, and Heavy fighting, A&S contests, dancing, feasting, drinking, court, and merchant row. I ran a small merchanting booth selling wooden goodes (turned stuff and furniture). Since I spent most of my time merchanting, and hanging out with [...]