Popular Woodworking 2007-08 № 163, страница 58

³/8" bowl gouge I'd brought as well. Whenever there was a problem, or a tool caught, there was a cry of "El Hook!" resounding throughout the shop. The artisans each turned out a fine mortar and pestle, several 8"-diameter bowls and tried their hands at goblets.

To make the mortar, we used cumbio, a wood I'd never used before. It's a reasonably dense, beech-like wood with pinkish and white stripes. It's a bit stringy. The pestle we made from celillon.

These products will be made by the artisans in their villages and sold in the country - they'd need to make a container load to export them. Working at the lathe isn't a full-time job for these lads. They also had their chores in the village life to tend to. But they are motivated.

During the time we were using the bicycle lathe at the training center, two of the more experienced artisans were constructing a new lathe made with parts located in Honduras. After having shopped at three different hardware stores, we were able to find some of the necessary parts but unable to locate a decent shaft, floor flanges or pillow blocks.

So we made do with ⁵/s" all-thread rod, a disk with a nut attached and wooden blocks as bearings. It didn't run as smoothly as the lathe made with parts I brought from the United

States, but we got it working nonetheless. Because my stay was limited down there, we did not have the time to really look around for more parts.

Artist at work. Here, an artisan hollows out the foot of a bowl on a traditional bow lathe.

But by the time I left, at least one of the artisans had the idea for what we needed and he had already found in the yard of the compound some pillow blocks that were frozen with rust. Knowing the lads, they would try to take them apart and get them working to build lathes back in their own villages. PW

Don teaches chairmaking and blacksmithing from his shop in Paint Lick, Ky. You can learn more about his work at handcraftwoodworks.com.

Ready to turn. The Honduran artisans check out the tool rest on the lathe. Note that one of them is holding "El Hook."

Old-fashioned ingenuity. The beam drill in action. The downward force provided by the beam above the brace assists greatly in boring accurate holes.

Results. A finished mortar and pestle, turned on a bicycle lathe in La Cieba, Honduras.

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