may come to mind is machinists using giant machines to carve parts from blocks of metal and artisans making bowls and vases. Well you would be right, those are some of the predominant things they are used for, but if you have the money and the time to learn, what you the crafter can make with these machines is almost limitless.

To start, we will talk about the more common of the two, 'the lathe.'

As crafters, most of us have seen fluted dowels in fancy staircases, or a beautiful "turned" wooden bowl, maybe even a turned stone vase or a simple wooden pen barrel. What all these things have in common is that they started out as blocks of metal, soft stone, plastic or the most common, wood, before being carved on a spinning lathe.