Touching my own history

Hi All,

I just went and finished a little project that I started well over a year ago. I put the final touches on restoring and refinishing a wooden nut bowl that my grandfather made on his wood lathe back in the 1940's. I started restoring it last year and then fell into a sort of emotional funk--having no one to pass these things on to--among other things. So it sat chucked up in my wood lathe month after month waiting for me to put the final coat of tung oil on it and then a coat of wax. That's what I did tonight.

I never knew my grandfather but he was obviously a very creative and clever man. He was fond of taking small scraps of various kinds of wood, squaring them up and gluing them all together in interesting patterns to make larger blocks of wood. Then he would turn bowls and lamps from them. Over the decades, the glue had dried out and the bowls had become rather fragile. That's why I started restoring them. He was quite a poor man and he'd sell his bowls and lamps to help support he and his wife during their retirement. My parents bought several items from him in the early years of their marriage to help support my dad's folks. My sister and I still have several pieces.

What I realized today is that when I have my hands on these things, in particular, restoring them, I have my hands on a piece of my own history. It's a very powerful, intimate feeling, and sensual experience--some kind of connection I can't fully explain. It has to be felt I guess. My wood lathe is a new Sears model, but it's mounted on the frame of my grandfather's old wood lathe. The lathe itself wore out back when my grandfather was still alive. He passed away the year I was born. His lathe was a large homemade affair that he made in the early part of the last century. The frame was hand milled out of a single tree the way they did things back before you could just hop down to the local lumber yard and buy beams. He might have been able to purchase beams like that when he made the lathe, but it wasn't his style. I've lugged that old machine carcass around with me for all of my adult life. My dad lugged it around through the 50's 60's and 70's. I set it up once back in the early 80's and made one bowl, but it was so much trouble due to worn bearings and ways and old leather strap drive belts that I never used it again. I just couldn't part with it even though it was pretty much worthless. So I modified it to make it a useful stand for my own wood lathe when I bought it a few years ago. So... the nut bowl my grandfather made back in the 1940's ended up being refurbished pretty much in the same machine that originally made it, and by hands that are also sort of a hand me down. There's something that feels really right about all that tonight.

Still have no idea where this bowl or the other turnings of his that I have will end up some day. I guess it doesn’t matter all that much as long as I can touch them in the here and now.

Love, Dave January 2006

This is the nut bowl I just finished. It's made of two or three types of soft wood. It has a little hardwood hammer to crack the nuts on the bowl's center post.
This is my next restoration project. This bowl is literally falling apart.
	This is a rather poor picture of my lathe. The orange thing that it's sitting on is what remains of my grandfather's original homemade lathe.