In article , mac davis
wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:24:04 -0400, "David C. Stone"
wrote:

Hopefully spinning up my lathe for the first time soon.

I was wondering if there is any particular wood that you'd
recommend for learning on? Judging by some of the
posts in the past week, I'm guessing that would NOT include
purpleheart or peach!

if you have no lathe experience, PLEASE check out the web pages of some of the
folks here first... a few examples:
http://aroundthewoods.com/

http://www.seafoamwoodturning.com/

http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/main.html

http://personalpages.tds.net/~upgeorge/index.html

http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/index.html

http://ghodgeswoodturner.com/

Thanks for the references - I'll be sure to check them out.

As they will ALL tell you, wear eye protection, work safely, and enjoy the
experience...

I've been steadily working my way up from drills to routers and table
saw. My collection of safety gear has been growing on par with my
toolkit! As a result, I still have all four eyes and eleven fingers...

If you have NO experience on a lathe, start out the way I started my kids...
with a closet rod and a few pieces of 2" x 2" pine or fir... get the feel of
the
lathe and the tools on the already rounded closet rod, then move up to
rounding
the 2x2... YMMV

That sounds like good advice. I've got a friend locally who can help
out, also. So far, all I've done is check that the lathe runs
smoothly, and figure out how to adjust the various parts. I also want
to make sure I have the bits'n'pieces to keep the tools in good shape
before I get too involved in anything. Looks like it'll be another
week or so before I'll be ready and have time to actually put some
wood in the lathe, so keep the suggestions coming!

Now all I have to do is figure out why I keep typing 'lather' instead
of 'lathe'...