Elfin Safety

For Brian's benefit this is a video of a bloke putting part of a tree trunk about 4 feet by 18 inches on a lathe and turning it down into a decorative column rather like a large chair leg. Looks very dodgy at the beginning due to the unbalanced shape of the log.

Reminds me of a Popeye cartoon from the 50s (or so). Conveyor belt with large solid metal cylinders (say 1ft long and 2ft diameter) arriving at a lathe which grabs each one and whittles it down to a small screw which drops onto the output conveyor belt.

On a much smaller scale, I got the same feeling the first time I saw a woodworking lathe in action, and the woodwork teacher turned a piece of twobitwo into a staircase spindle.

Apart from Italian restaurants, does anyone really need a pepper grinder that big?

Tim