Croquet Set

One day my neighbor across the street asked me if I would like to borrow his lathe. He noticed that I did not have one, and remembered my story about making baseball bats as a kid. I thought it would be fun to try turning again after all these years, so I said, ldquo;yes, I would.rdquo; I always wanted to make a croquet set, so I decided this would be a good project to learn how to turn again. I found a classic croquet set plan in the 2007<em>Woodworkerrsquo;s Journal</em>that had all kinds of things to be turnedmdash; mallet heads, handles, wheels, and legs. I made the cart from cherry, and the mallets and wicket posts from hickory. I learned to be patient with the mallet turnings, and learned how to make round tenons on the cart spindles using a table saw. I had to turn two sections for the mallet handles and join them with a round mortise and tenon because the lathe only had a 15 inch span. The mallets were made with hickory. I finished it with garnet shellac and buffed it out with several coats of a hard wax. After all said and done, I caught the turning bug and now plan to purchase my own lathe very soon. -- Orginally posted by jameshoerter