And after an evening's use.
We have an old, overgrown lilac tree on our property that got a serious pruning some time ago. That left me with some lengths of lilac boughs that had been aging outside, somewhat sheltered from the elements under a bench.
I'm a novice at wood turning, so I thought I'd set myself an exercise in cylinder turning, using the lilac boughs as challenging material. The result I found myself getting was quite attractive -- the boughs' flaws contrasting with the machined wood. Then it dawned on me that if you drill a 3/4" hole in most anything, you have a candlestick holder. So I bored each cylinder at one end, and you see the result in the above photos.
As I discovered from my turning exercise, lilac is a lovely, dense hardwood that machines nicely -- shearing cuts on the lathe produce a smooth surface that scarcely needs sanding. If lilacs grew in abundance to the size of oaks, there'd be a lot of lilac furniture in the world.
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