Salt & Pepper Mills Build Process

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My M33 tailstock live arbor arrived during the week, so I decided to try turning the next peppermill body using chuck support on both ends, using these jaws:

Here it is mounted with the chucks supporting each end:

The disadvantage of mounting it this way is that I have to use a short rest as the longer one would interfere with the chuck at the tailstock end. Nevertheless, it worked okay.

For roughing this one out, I started with the calipers and parting tool as before, then roughed the left-hand half down using the parting tool rather than switching to the spindle gouge. After doing that half though, I got fed up with getting showered in wood chips so I switched to the spindle gouge, which makes it easier to direct the shavings sideways. Once again, I used the inept woodturner's saviour (external shear scraper) to finesse the shape...

... and then sandpaper to smooth it out.

After sanding, I did a test fit of the lid and saw that I'd made the body a bit big for this lid (I think the lid is smaller than the other ones I've made)...

... so a little tweaking was required; better now:

For the last two mills, I went back to the previous method of tailstock support so that I could use the longer rest:

With that all done, I've got four more mills that are looking okay:

They've had a first coat of oil; after the second one has gone on tomorrow, I'll insert the mechanisms and try them out.

With all those mills done, I decided I'd reached my woodturning limit. I don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as other types of woodwork and there's only so much of it I can do before I get fed up with it. I've now hung the lathe back up and I spent the latter part of the afternoon sweeping up and putting stuff away and for the first time in ages I've got a clear main bench and clear portable workbench. The metalwork bench still has some clutter on it, but I can live with that for now. I simply don't have enough space any more to put everything away so it's pretty rare that both the metalwork and woodwork benches are clear.

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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