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Justin Braden

Joined
Sep 13, 2025
Messages
3
Likes
44
Location
Ozark, MO
My name is Justin Braden. I've been a member of the Southwest Missouri Woodturners for almost 2 years now.
I've always liked working with my hands and woodworking but I had never tried turning. When I expressed interest, my father in law dug out a homebrew lathe from the 1930's that ran on a washing machine motor, a light switch, and prayer. It was love at first spin.

In less than a month I had a new lathe and had joined my local AAW chapter.

Right now I'm working out of my half of the garage for a shop. My wife and her car get the other half.

I'm looking forward to sharing my work and being inspired by your work.

Here's a few photos of my work and shop.PXL_20250918_235208738.PORTRAIT.jpgPXL_20250915_153520433.PORTRAIT.jpgPXL_20250914_181615438.jpg
 
Welcome to the forum, Justin! Keep posting your work here; it's good stuff. By the way, did you adapt the copper lid to the piece or did you make it from scratch or what?

Mark
 
Welcome to the forum, Justin! Keep posting your work here; it's good stuff. By the way, did you adapt the copper lid to the piece or did you make it from scratch or what?

Mark
Thanks Mark. It's from scratch. I adapted a technique from Steve McNeil that he demonstrated at SWAT in Waco this year. I turned a form that had the shape I wanted into a scrap on a face plate. Then used the tailstock to hold a copper sheet into the form, then sunk it into the form with a ball peen hammer. Then once it had the shape I wanted I turned off the edge with a carbide diamond tool. here's my practice with aluminum.PXL_20250913_145817227.jpg
 
Right now I'm working out of my half of the garage for a shop. My wife and her car get the other half.

You’re having too much fun!

When we moved to this farm my shop was 1/2 a 2-car garage until I built a shop down by the barn.

It was great! But tight. When a friend came over one had to step outside so the other could get to the lathe! Did a lot of turning there! Besides a full-sized lathe, I had a mini lathe, two bandsaws, routers, sanders, wood storage, planer, workbench, shelves, and too many lathe tools. The radial arm saw did stick a TINY bit into the car parking side!

The garage wasn’t heated or cooled so in the summer I used a fan and opened the garage door when it wasn’t too hot. For the winter a kerosene heater knocked off the chill if I remembered to start it up ahead of time! I used a big shop vac for dust collection and ceiling-mounted Jet air cleaner worked well to pull the fines out of the air.

The metal work looks fun. I learned once to make carve/grind a hollow into the end grain of a piece of log then peen the metal into the hollow with special smooth tools. Kind of noisy!

JKJ
 
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