I have only used the lathe once before this, for just a few minutes, under the watchful eye of my friend back in Seattle. So I have been quite excited for this opportunity to finally arrive! In preparation, I glued up the internal hexagons left over from the previous solar project, and went for it. I will say this - plywood is quite exhausting to work with. And also, the CNC is your friend. Rather than spend time turning this down to cylindrical, I could have simply cut circles on the CNC before I cut the hexagons, yes more time on the CNC, but less time leaning into the machine tiring myself out. And it is tiring. All that glue is hard, and two types of plywood also presented some difficulty. Nonetheless, I felt happy with the final result.
Now that I have this piece, my plan is to make it into two tops for some newborn second cousins of mine. I never did finish the airplane from last semester, which I'd still like to finish for the slightly older second cousin - Sol, so he doesn't feel left out. But these tops will be much simpler to produce, and may much more durable as a result. That does depend, however, on my attention to detail.
