Everything needs a little love now and then.   We’ve been pushing the lathe pretty hard lately, including turning some things that are definitely pushing the capacity limits of this [more]

New techniques, new tools, new materials, oh my!   This project builds on all the previous lathe articles in this series in order to make something genuinely special. This will be [more]

New materials and new techniques.   Now that we’ve learned how to grind HSS tool bits, some really nice new avenues open up to us. One of those avenues is [more]

An easy method to get started.   High Speed Steel is wonderful stuff. With all the talk these days about carbide insert tooling, and online sellers practically giving away brazed [more]

A second fun project to amaze your friends.   We’re going to build on the basic skills from the steel ring project, such as tool setup, facing, drilling, and turning. I’ll [more]

An approachable first project on the lathe.   Another post so soon? It’s true, Blondihacks posts never come this quickly in sequence. We average about once a month around here. That’ll [more]

From a dream to first chips   If you’re interested in making things, and particularly metal things, you’re on a road that eventually leads to machine tools. Machine tools have a special [more]