Friction

The other day I was trying to make some lamp stands from some hickory that a friend had given me.  After totally messing them up and having to make them over again out of some other material, I had just a little bit of the hickory left over.

The hickory seemed especially hard and dense, so I decided to turn a mallet.  I found a plan of sorts in an old-time book, fired up the lathe, and had the head made soon enough.  Before removing it from the lathe, I wanted to add some decorative features that were shown in the book.

I had heard that you could burn lines into a turning simply by pressing a piece of wire hard against the wood as it spins in the lathe.  That sounded easy enough.  So I got a piece of soft iron wire, looped one end around each hand to get a good grip, and gave it a go.

Holy catfish, that wire got hot fast.

Duh.