Tips on mini wood lathe project

1. Always choose appropriate woods for your projects. Woods with excessive resinous oil sap, knotty, splinter nature, or very high moisture contents do not tend to give good results for beginner wood turners.
2. Make sure to keep your work area brightly lit and clean.
3. Allow lots of practice time. This is machine-assisted hand work, and perfect results cannot be expected overnight. As people says practice make perfect.
4. Keep your knives/chisels sharp!
5. Stop your work piece frequently to inspect, measure, and make comparisons to templates while turning. Once you have removed too much wood from the work piece, you have a very labor intensive piece of firewood.
6. Start small, projects like yo yos, tops, and drumsticks because it use small, inexpensive piece of lumber and it does not costly if you make a mistake
7. Look for non-typical wood for turning. Tree limbs, gnarly wood too tough to split, scrap lumber, and other sources can give you an excellent variety of turning stock.
8. Use measuring tools for repeat projects. Calipers and templates allow you to reproduce a design repeatedly.
9. Buy the highest quality turning tools you can afford, and buy an assortment for different turning tasks. This will ensure you got the perfect result for the project.
10. Always keep close watch in case of an emergency.