New girlfriend

Last week I moved on to the turning part of the course. I was told when I started that I was to receive a new girlfriend. Now I am a little unimpressed with this since I wasn't ready to be dating and well, it's a mechanical lathe. I have to clean it and make sure it doesn't rust, and generally take care of it. Unfortunately it returns none of the favors, unless you count the work I can achieve using it. But I tell you it's just not the same...

So I decided to take a few pictures with my new gal, who shall remain unnamed at this point. Here is the first of I'm sure many pictures behind this "beauty":

The majority of this week consisted of using hand gravers to make perfect cylinders with the lathe. I am now capable of turning perfect cylinders accurate to within 1/100th of a millimeter. I've now moved on to making 4 more tools for watchmaking. They all are made of steel and I will have some pictures when I finish them. But for now, here's a picture of the start of a cylinder I was doing for practice:

Anyways, I will be doing this for more than a few weeks I'm sure so don't expect too many new and interesting things on the watchmaking front.

Random thought #2

- I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?