How to Make a Cocktail Pick on the Woodturning Lathe

This is a great project to hone turning skills to carefully create the pointed tip of the cocktail pick. It takes sharp, sharp tools and patience to create the point without snapping the wood.

Supplies and Equipment

• ½" or ¾" hardwood dowel (note: be sure the wood you choose is food safe; not all hardwoods are)
• Wood oil
• Proxxon turning chisel set
• Proxxon MCRO Woodturning Lathe DB 250

Instructions

1. Use a center finder to mark the center of one end of the dowel. Use an awl to make a small divot at the center mark.
   
2. Load the unmarked end of the dowel into the lathe chuck.
3. Set tailstock so it is firmly seated in the center divot.
   
4. Use a bowl gouge to begin shaping the pick. Shape the decorative handle before completing the shaping of the pick end. 
   
5.  Continue shaping.
   
6. Continue shaping until the dowel at the pick end just falls away.
   

   
7. The pick is nearly finished with the handle end still attached to the dowel in the chuck. Now, sand the pick with progressively finer grits of sandpaper.
   
8. The last step is parting off the completed cocktail pick at the handle. Alternatively, the entire piece—still attached to the dowel—can be removed from the lathe and cut away with a saw.
9. Finish with a butcher block wood oil.
   

Carole

Hair Stick Turned on Proxxon Lathe

I love turning wood using my Proxxon wood turning lathe!! My latest project are these hair sticks.

I started with a 1/4" oak dowel for each hair stick.

I mounted it on the lathe, and used the roughing gouge, skew tool, and spindle gouge to add the decorative beading on the hair sticks.

This is the first hair stick as it came off the lathe, along with a close up of the beading detail.

The next step was coloring this hair stick with Plaid Folk Art Ultra Dye. Wow!! What a vivid color it gave the wood!!

The second hair stick I polished with wax. And, you can see by my pic below that I'm not a candidate for a hair stick!! So, these have found a new home with someone who has the gorgeous hair to show them off.

Carole

Honey Dippers

I have a new favorite tool in my studio—the Proxxon Micro Woodturning Lathe DB 250. I've always been fascinated with woodturning, and am thrilled to finally get to try my hand at it. I began by practicing a bit on some generic hardware store dowels to learn about the lathe and the tools. My first real project was honey dippers.

For this project I used 5/8" oak dowels. The first step was cutting the 3' dowel into 12" lengths using my Proxxon scroll saw.

Next, I marked the center of the end of the dowel.

I drilled a small pilot hole at this center point to anchor the dowel at the tail.

With the oak dowel in place on the lathe, I used a pencil to mark guidelines to indicate the sections of the honey dipper—dipper section, mid section, handle, and top.

I used the parting tool to make the grooves for dipping the honey. The roughing gouge was used to establish the basic shape of the honey dipper, while the detail gouge was used to define design elements. The skew tool was used to smooth the turned shapes.

The piece was sanded while it was still on the lathe. Here is one of the honey dippers ready to part off.

After parting off—cutting away the waste dowel on either end—I sanded the top and bottom of the honey dipper. The last step in the project was to treat the honey dippers with a food-safe oil; I used coconut oil. 

I'm totally pleased with my first lathe project and excited to turn more projects on this remarkable micro tool.

Carole