Some good, some bad...the usual.

Last night I started turning again, for the first time in a while. First, the "not so good":

I am still getting tubes stuck in the blanks when I prepare pens. Not often, but occasionally. This time it happened with a Tigre Caspi pen that I am trying to make. Getting the tube stuck in one blank of the two is okay, since some of the wood needs to be parted off anyway. However, I got it stuck in both ends...which means that I either have to use solvent to dissolve the glue and start over, or glue a piece of tube in the other end of the blank and try to salvage it. Not sure which way I will go with it.

Also, cleaning the headstock and the morse taper, while helpful, did not solve the issue. The chuck still comes off of the morse taper when I try to turn, and it is getting very annoying. I may bring the taper and the chuck to the Woodturner's Club meeting tonight. Maybe it is defective...if I do not solve it tonight, I will bring it Thursday or Saturday to Woodcraft and ask Kurt to take a look.

Now, the good:

The new Spindlemaster tool that I bought last week is fantastic. It basically acts like a skew chisel, in terms of getting close, smooth cuts, but it does not have the same risk of tearout! I am not entirely sure of the best way to sharpen it. I used my diamondstone, since it is a flat tool, but I am not sure if it should be done on the grinder instead.

I also made a good bloodwood Classic American pen, as part of pen/magnifier and pen/letter opener sets I am making. This offsets the cocobolo pen that I tried to make, where a chunk of the wood sheared off when I was using the parting tool. I had to basically lose the wood on that one, and I kept the tubes for future use.