Every year my woodturning club has a gift exchange, and a potluck dinner. Quite
a popular holiday get together for the members and their wives. This year I
decided to give  number of gifts, all are of course handmade. For every gift I
give, I get one in exchange, all are turned objects. All are wrapped so you
don’t know what it is. You get a raffle ticket as you enter for each gift you
bring.

Last year I gave a couple of my burnishing tools as my gift offering. They were
very well received. I guess no one else has thought of this. So this year I am
giving more of them. And an awl that I made from a scrap screwdriver.

  https://picasaweb.google.com/102358420595488787966/XmasGiftExchange?a
uthuser=0&feat=directlink">https://picasaweb.google.com/102358420595488787966/Xm
asGiftExchange?authuser=0&feat=directlink

These are pretty easy to make. I just put a ferrule on a handle and drill a hole
for the actual metal burnisher to fit into. The very first ones I made had a
long metal burnisher sticking out of the handle, but with use I found that it is
not necessary. An inch is plenty.

If you don’t have a suitable piece of metal, just grind off most of the spiral
part of a high speed drill bit, and stick the spiral part into the handle. The
shank does the burnishing.

So what does a woodturner want with a scraper burnisher? After you grind a
turning scraper, you burnish the edge and get a really fine scraper edge which
gives you a very nice finished surface on your turning. Also  good for a cabinet
scraper.

I made everything from what would have otherwise been scrap. My wife fell in
love with the one with a cocobolo handle. I told her she could have it if she
would start woodturning. That went over like a lead balloon.
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