I'm going to be making several tool handles for Christmas gifts. These will be for small hand-held garden tools (little trowel, three-pronged cultivator, etc...), so they won't take hard blows like a hammer handle or the like.
I'm making some of them out of ash and they've turned out beautifully.
I also have some small hedge tree limbs that I cut off a tree -- the limbs had died around a year or so ago, so they are somewhat dry already, though not at all rotten yet.
But my question is this: Can you turn a tool handle out of the center of a small piece of wood? The handles I've made out of ash have been from blanks I've cut from much larger logs, so none of them contain any pith, but these hedge branches, if turned right on the lathe, would contain pith in the center. Is that feasible, or is it destined for disaster?
Thanks.