Because of the cord wrapped around the wood, which constantly pulls down and up, it’s not really possible to turn thin objects on a pole lathe. The wood would bend or even break. But then again, they’ve been turning those for a long time. Think of bobbins for lacemaking, for example. How would they have done that? Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find anything about that yet. But… that doesn’t mean we can’t try to make something ourselves that would be a possible solution. After brainstorming and discussing a few ideas, we got started.
The idea was as follows. If we’d create an axle (photo 1) that runs through an additional headstock (photo 2) on the lathe, so that it remains stable despite the forces of the cord, then we should be able to drive a piece of wood with that rotating axle without exerting much force. No sooner said than done, and you can see the result below.
Now the piece of wood on the right side of the lathe can be carved without the forces of the drive cord acting on it. Of course, this still needed to be tested before we could start making the really fun objects. By the end of the afternoon, we were ready to test the principle.
And lo and behold, the principle works. The attachment of the turning piece to the axle still leaves something to be desired (with excessive force during carving, the piece slips in the attachment), but we can think about that tonight and work on it further tomorrow.
