I first touched a lathe last september. By February I had quite a few hollowed forms, bowls, boxes, and jewelry display pieces. It took 3 months for my Nova 1624 and all of my turnings to get to the big island. Due to relationship problems I left with no tools, no lathe, nothing but the shirt on my back. I didn't even have any shoes for the plane ride. My very first turning resides at Rabbit Kekei's house in Waimea on the north shore of Hawaii. It is a marblewood plate that I gave Rabbit after talking to him for 7 hours on a flight from LAX to Honalulu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Kekai
Woodturning,along with wood carving, and hula are the oldest hawaiian artforms and anybody who knows a little history of woodturning knows what a calabash is. This interview with Rabbit can be found here http://www.legendarysurfers.com/surf...The%20Calabash
but this part is particularly interesting as it is common for your "uncle" (an older native hawaiian that looks out for you and your safety as the polynesion culture is one of war.....well it is common for your "auntie" or "uncle" to give you a hawaiian name.....this is Rabbit on the "passing of the Calabash"
Passing on of The Calabash
In talking about the passage of knowledge from one generation to another, Rabbit mentioned Dad Center. "Good man," Rabbit said simply but with emphasis. "So you learn a lot from those old guys. Nowadays, in my own opinion, I wouldn’t pass on the waterman knowledge from those guys to the modern-day guys. If there’s a certain guy that I see, that it’s worth passing on, I do it. But outside of that I won’t, because these guys, they’re ego guys. Everything is for them and I hate that. You see, pass on to something, do it right and try to share.
But a lot of these guys, modern-day coaches, I watch them and sometimes, like the Outrigger crew here, the club, they had the best crew you can get (I used to compete against them), but they never win, they’re way in the back. Like eight crews and they’re number seven. They got pissed off at their coach. So they came and asked me. I told them, you know what, I cannot do it unless you get permission from the club and from the coach. The coach tell me, ‘You think you can do anything better than what we’re doing for the kids, you got my blessing out there.’ I asked, ‘Free hand?’ He said, ‘Free hand!’ In other words they don’t bug me. For four days I worked the crew. The fifth day I got them to go slow for timing to iron out all the kinks. They went in that next race and they broke the record. One of the fathers had money, you know, he tried to push some on us. But I said no, my reward is to see the kids win. But I created such a monster by coaching those kids to win! All the other clubs that were losing, they wanted me to coach."
Rabbit was asked what to him is a waterman and he replied, "A guy that knows everything. He can handle himself in the worst situations, and he can look out for other people. For instance, every time there’s a body recovery they call us guys. We know the situation, where to go. They say, ‘Why here?’ We just know the ground. One time this guy who was Chief of Detectives come to me and say, ‘My son’s out there.’ So I took my board out there and look around on the bottom… and found him… brought in his little boy."
Asked who was worth investing in, today (mid-1990's); who had the waterman’s spirit, Rabbit replied:
"There’s a lot of up and coming lifeguards who are watermen. The pick of the littler is Brian Keaulana. Boy! He’s got all that knowledge that Buffalo has pumped into him. That guy, he’s the best. Have you seen that rescue he did with the jet ski and everything? I tell you, modern day techniques with those jet skis are unbelievable. Before, we never did have anything like that. The only thing we had was what we called the buddy system. One guy go down, one stay up and look for ‘em, or we try to get his board, in big surf we go out and grab ‘em tandem. When things happen like that you just get ‘em in to the beach, smile and go back out."
Does he wear a leash?
"Right now, at my age, I’ll take it with!" Rabbit replied. "I don’t want to swim in from way the hell out there. In our time, at the Makaha contest, if you lose your board, you’re out. That’s why George Downing and I, white water or not, we’d just prone it out. In our days proning was chicken. It wasn’t kosher. But if you prone out, you live, and get back up again…"
The next day I ran into Jimmy buffett on the streets of waikiki and we spent 20 minutes or so browsing thru some galleries.....he was happy to hear that he'd be seeing Rabbit soon.
so I touched my first lathe in september minus 4 and a half months and all my tools pieces and my nova.....these are the pieces I turned in the last couple of months on a 3 legged grizzley lathe with a tool rest that would not secure down let alone get the rest within 2" of the piece. these were done on the grizzly lathe and a set of harbor freight tools. many of the pieces are not finished because my lathe broke when I showed up here....
http://www.myphoto.com/pupils777/5943
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Originally Posted by Mike Minto
