Raymond Overman
03-17-2005, 3:24 PM
My daughter has a very cute book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I thought I'd write a little something in the same style for us woodturner's. No offense to the women turners out there. I just cobbled this together quickly. Replace man with woman as needed.
If You Give A Man A Lathe
If you give a man a lathe, he's going to want a chainsaw to go with it.
If you give him a chainsaw he's going to want to go find a tree to use it on.
If he cuts up the tree and hauls it back to the house, he's going to need somewhere to store it.
That will be in your back yard.
If he stores the logs, he'll eventually get around to cutting them up into bowl blanks with his chainsaw.
When he cuts them up, he'll soak the ends in wax and need somewhere dry to store them.
He'll want to build a shelter.
So he'll build a shelter to put all his blanks under.
He'll pace anxiously waiting for the blanks to dry so he can put them on his lathe.
He'll get impatient.
He'll then need to use your computer to look up bowl blank drying processes on the Internet.
He'll find a half dozen different techniques and have to try them all.
Finally he'll make a decision as to which one he likes best, and 1 out of every 3 times it will fail leaving him with cracked blanks.
He'll be very upset.
You'll have to console him.
He'll go out to his shop and turn some more bowls that turn out good.
He'll be proud of himself.
He'll want you to look at every single piece he makes.
He'll want feedback.
He'll build a website to show off his work and talk to people he doesn't know on the Internet about it.
He'll want feedback.
He'll turn more and more bowls, vases, platters, boxes, what knots.
He'll want to sell them and swear that he can make enough money to cover the costs of his tools.
He'll then want to join a Woodturner's Club (read "Support Group") so that he can share his woes with them and show off his successes.
He'll ask for $30, then he'll need $40 more for AAW membership.
After he joins the group he'll see that he needs more tools so he'll buy a bandsaw, and some chisels, and a buffing system, and a sharpening system.
He may even get so carried away that he buys something that needs 220V single phase and have to get his shop re-wired.
When he gets his bandsaw he'll be able to produce more and more blanks so he'll try to find more trees.
When he finds more trees he'll use his chainsaw to cut them up into managable chunks.
He'll bring them home.
They'll be much larger than his lathe can handle so he'll cut them up in blanks.
And chances are, they'll still be larger than his lathe will handle.
And if the blanks are still too large, he's going to ask you for a bigger lathe.
Raymond Overman
If You Give A Man A Lathe
If you give a man a lathe, he's going to want a chainsaw to go with it.
If you give him a chainsaw he's going to want to go find a tree to use it on.
If he cuts up the tree and hauls it back to the house, he's going to need somewhere to store it.
That will be in your back yard.
If he stores the logs, he'll eventually get around to cutting them up into bowl blanks with his chainsaw.
When he cuts them up, he'll soak the ends in wax and need somewhere dry to store them.
He'll want to build a shelter.
So he'll build a shelter to put all his blanks under.
He'll pace anxiously waiting for the blanks to dry so he can put them on his lathe.
He'll get impatient.
He'll then need to use your computer to look up bowl blank drying processes on the Internet.
He'll find a half dozen different techniques and have to try them all.
Finally he'll make a decision as to which one he likes best, and 1 out of every 3 times it will fail leaving him with cracked blanks.
He'll be very upset.
You'll have to console him.
He'll go out to his shop and turn some more bowls that turn out good.
He'll be proud of himself.
He'll want you to look at every single piece he makes.
He'll want feedback.
He'll build a website to show off his work and talk to people he doesn't know on the Internet about it.
He'll want feedback.
He'll turn more and more bowls, vases, platters, boxes, what knots.
He'll want to sell them and swear that he can make enough money to cover the costs of his tools.
He'll then want to join a Woodturner's Club (read "Support Group") so that he can share his woes with them and show off his successes.
He'll ask for $30, then he'll need $40 more for AAW membership.
After he joins the group he'll see that he needs more tools so he'll buy a bandsaw, and some chisels, and a buffing system, and a sharpening system.
He may even get so carried away that he buys something that needs 220V single phase and have to get his shop re-wired.
When he gets his bandsaw he'll be able to produce more and more blanks so he'll try to find more trees.
When he finds more trees he'll use his chainsaw to cut them up into managable chunks.
He'll bring them home.
They'll be much larger than his lathe can handle so he'll cut them up in blanks.
And chances are, they'll still be larger than his lathe will handle.
And if the blanks are still too large, he's going to ask you for a bigger lathe.
Raymond Overman