Turning a Set of Garden Tools

by Dennis Daudelin

 

Mike Hunter, a friend of Woodturning Online and the provider of the those great carbide turning tools has recently released a set of stainless steel garden hand tools.

There are 2 hand tools; a garden shovel and a garden fork. These garden tools are wonderful tools for yourself or for giving as a gift.

To make the tool handles, you will need a 1.5" x 1.5" x 12" wood blank. For this project, I choose to use Olive. I like the way that it turns, the natural oils in the wood that are good in wet environments (like gardens) and the wonderful smell.

Here are the links to the items that we will use in this project:

Garden Shovel

Garden Fork

Olivewood Blanks

All of our parts are now ready to be used. You can see the 2 brass ferrules that come with the tools.

Here is the lathe setup that I had available today. It's a Delta midi-lathe with a Oneway Talon Chuck and a Oneway Live Center.

(click here for a close-up look at the chuck mounting)

I've cut the Olivewood to 8" on the chop saw and since it was almost perfectly square, I inserted it into the #2 jaws of the Talon chuck. The live center is pressed into the end of the wood where I've found the center and used an awl to create a dimple to start the live center.

For an alternative, and more traditional, mounting of the wood, you could have put it between centers and turned a tenon on one end. Then insert the tenon into the jaws of the chuck.

But more and more I just put my freshly squared piece of wood into the jaws of the chuck when I know that I'm not going to take the project out of the jaws for the entire turning. In this case, I don't have to worry about re-registering the blank so that it is straight and turning smoothly. It's fast, easy and very secure!

Now that our blank is mounted and ready for turning, let's go to Page 2 to start the turning.

Go to Page 2