I was inspired by a blogger I follow to revisit a candlestick telephone project I did when I first started turning.
The original was a reasonable attempt for a new turner.
Not bad, in my opinion, considering I had been turning at this point for around 5 months.
The second attempt started well enough, using scraps of timber I had sitting around. Laburnum for the microphone and ear trumpet, and elm for the rest.
I feel the stem should have been thicker, but I just had to work with what stock I had.
The components laid out. Well, most of them anyway.
All assembled, waiting for a skoot of clear lacquer.
After the first coat of lacquer.
The finished article. You didn’t expect that then, did you? I just had this idea, and we needed a new lamp for under the stairs.
This is it completely done now, with the flex anchored in the base.
This is the first post in ages. WordPress has become so cumbersome to use, I’m not sure whether I will continue with the whole blog thing.
Adventures in Turning 
Excellent work! Cool idea with the light.
It would be a shame if you gave up posting. Surely WordPress isn’t that bad really?
Thanks for the words of encouragement, and thanks for the inspiration to revisit some of my older turnings.
In terms of Wordmess, I’ve used worse platforms, but these changes make no sense – they just make the platform harder to use. This post took me almost 3 hours to complete, because the photo uploader is so bad I have to use a roundabout route to load photos one at a time. Maybe this is a Firefox issue? Who knows?
There is some rogue Flash process which uses around 90% of my laptop system resources when posting on here, but I can’t seem to post anything at all if I disable the Flash plugin in the browser. Again, it could be a Firefox issue.
I doubt I will stop using Wordmess – I will probably just post much less frequently than before.
I agree it would be a shame if you gave up on the blog. Since discovering it I’ve gone back and read them all with interest.
Can I ask your advice? I got a second hand Record CL3 for Christmas and started to turn a biggish (but still within the lathe bed) piece of chestnut when the spindle snapped off at the headstock. How rare is this? The chap is repairing it FOC but says that my “home made” faceplate was the cause – it is a nut welded to a square flat metal plate. It runs true and seems balanced. How likely is it the cause of the fracture and do I ditch the other four faceplates I have?
I’d be interested in your comments as an experienced turner.
Fred
Thanks for the positive input. I’m not sure about the experienced turner part, I still view myself as a beginner due to the short amount of time I have available for turning. Wordmess really need to start listening to their users. This has been ongoing for a while, and they are just not interested in what people have to say.
In terms of your lathe issue, I think it is unlikely to be caused by your faceplates if they are running true.
I had a Record lathe (still have it under a bench in fact) and never got on with it. One of the issues perhaps is the headstock spindle is thinner than some others. Record have changed the headstock spindle size to M33 with MT2 taper instead of the previous 3/4” x 16 and MT1 combination.
I’m not sure whether the casting has changed or whether it is possible to upgrade to the new headstock spindle size. I think having a more sturdy spindle would eliminate a lot of the wobble I disliked immensely with the Record machine.