I finally reached the end of the road with the skew when it came to
turning
small. Just couldn't get into tight "V"s with the double bevel on the
skew.

So - I used a single bevel, regular old quarter inch Buck Bros. bench
chisel
to go finer - turning down a half inch poplar dowel. Worked like a
charm,
despite my initial apprehension. Great for turning fine beads, coves
and
longer tapers, but too wide for short non-tapered areas.

So I tried my shop made parting tool - a sawzall blade with the teeth
ground off, sides slightly tapered to reduce binding on deep cuts, and
end ground square. Still haven't made a real handle for this thing,
the wrapped paper towel thing has worked up to now so why change
things? (see attached "TOOLS").

Turns out I can turn a LOT smaller than I'd thought - the piece on the
far right of the second image - "BASTA" - tapers from 0.02" out
to 0.03" (about a half a millimeter for the metric folks).

Had I tried to turn this fine from the get go it'd probably been a
disaster. But by sneaking up on it, progressively getting finer
with each subsequent piece, I learned ways to use a bench chisel
in a new way which opens up new turning possibilities.

Maybe that By The Yard It's Hard - BUT - By The Inch It's a Cinch
thing is true.

Fun this turning thing.

charlie b

ps - Kate - thanks for the cribbage pegs suggestion. Please
e-mail me so I can send you some of these little experiments.