New Wood Lathe

I finished the bench for my new mini-lathe on Monday. I still need to bolt the lathe to the bench but it's just about ready to be up and running. The lathe came with a rack for the tools - knock-out bar, spindle wrench. etc. - that I'm going to fasten to the left end of the bench and I'll make a rack for the turning tools on the right front. The bench should be long enough to fasten the extended ways later on if I decide to spring for those. I probably will but I've used up my tool buying budget for a while. I need to move one of the can lights I put up over the router table. You can see from the photo the light pattern shines mostly on the bare end of the bench. No big deal there - just buy another piece of BX a couple of feet longer, unscrew the bracket from the trusses and move it down a couple of feet. 

When I finish with the lathe installation I should be about set for equipment. I'd like to have a decent drill press and a planer would be nice but what I need next is to get the other tools moved out of the basement and into the barn. I'm not planning on becoming a woodworker necessarily, but it would be nice to have everything in one spot and be able to make sawdust without worrying about it getting all over the house. 

I managed to fix a couple of other items Monday as well. I managed to break off the plug for the headphones inside the MP3 player a couple of weeks ago. I was mowing and I had the ear buds inside my muffs and the player in my pocket. I got off the mower to move a hunk of cable by the scrap pile and when I tossed the cable it snagged the wire, pulled the ear buds out of the muffs and broke off the very bottom of the plug in the jack. If I hadn't have been wearing the ear muffs it probably would have just pulled the cord out and I would have been OK. However, I was working on another little project and came across the ball point pen refill in the photo. It was a perfect fit into the broken piece so I mixed up a little epoxy, put a dab on the end of it and glued it to the broken part inside the player. Three hours later, gave it a tug and out she came. I also fixed the paper shredder for the Missus. All this hanging around the house is starting to pay dividends.