Leland:

A Boy and his Lathe.

The flying chips and smooth round shapes of lathe work in my shop 
sparked my nine year old son John's interest in woodworking. He wanted 
to get started right away. I wanted  to say yes, but I thought he was to 
inexperienced to handle the hazard of power equipment. I knew I had to 
act fast, before his interest waned, so I built a  simple foot powered 
pole lathe and had Jon set up and turning in half a day.

Here, I'll let Jon tell the story, as he wrote it down a couple years later.

Working on a lathe was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. 
My father had set up the amazing looking contraption and I didn't know 
if it would work. He built it with a peddle attached to a long rope that 
was attached a tall, springy spruce tree with a rope. On the way up the 
  rope wound around a piece of wood stock about eight inches long.

My father sat down. "Here Jon, watch this." He pumped on the pedal and 
the wood that was the stock turned. Setting a chisel to it he shaved off 
part of the stock.

I had watched him turn on his electric lathe. It had been very fast and 
he had done it with ease. But I was disappointed. The stock turned 
slowly, like a ballet dancer in slow motion. He showed how to shave off 
wood. After a while my leg got tired and I was winded. You had to move 
the pedal far up and down, a full 50 degrees.

But I did the work and with much practice I really got a hold on turning 
the lathe. There were some advantages. You could sit down, something you 
never do on an electric lathe. If you hurt yourself it would not keep 
turning and injure yourself further, because you would stop pumping.

When I got very good at it I began to make things. My first projects 
were laser  guns. I was good at them because I know what they looked 
like from reading science fiction. With practice I made wooden tops, jet 
airplanes and model rockets.

While I worked on my lathe I went many places. My father took me to the 
Maine Festival. This festival was a showing off of the state's artistic 
spirit. I was excited to be part of it. I turned for three days. My leg 
got very sore and tired, then I got used to it. It was not all work of 
course. I got to go out and meet some dowsers--the people who find water 
and other things in the ground by using pendulums and sticks. I turned 
them some pendulums and they bought them from me. I had finally had made 
something and sold it. some of my laser guns that I turned were sold 
later, and I got the money. I turned tops for the girls, then we went 
over to the fine arts to paint them bright colors. We went to the Maine 
Festival three times. We also went to the sidewalk art festival in 
Portland, where crowds of people gathered around to see lathe work.

The thing I liked about the lathe was that it gave me a chance to learn 
how to turn without the danger of power equipment. I could create many 
different things on the small lathe that I had only watched my dad do. 
Chips rapidly accumulated under my workbench as I got more into my work.

For about two years I worked avidly on the lathe. Near the end of the 
second year I felt that the lathe was too simple. I wanted to work on 
something much faster.

One day, after I hand packed up the lathe and not used it for a few 
months my father said, "I think it's time you learned to turn on the 
electric lathe." I now turn on that lathe. I sometime miss that old pump 
lathe though. It was just fun now that I look back upon it. It was a 
learning experience that was part of growing up.

--Jon Leeke
   March 1984

Check out the article Jon and I wrote for the Nov-Dec 1985 issue of Fine 
Woodworking. There are photos of Jon working at his lathe, and all the 
details of to build and turn on the pole lathe.

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