It's very funny my first turning was also a drawer pull. Instead of a drill press (which I didn't own back then) I used a hand drill mounted on a block of wood on my workbench. I chucked it up the same way Reed did with a cut off screw and used a block of wood screwed to the work bench as my tool rest. I used a sharpened and reground flat blade screw driver as my scraper to turn the cabinet knob. Look how far we've come. for me that was sometime around 1977.
>I used a hand drill mounted on a block of wood on my workbench.
That reminds me of a very clever man I met while exploring the narrow streets of Venice last year (I forget, I may have mentioned this once).
The window of his little shop was full of very clever things he had made, mostly out of old furniture legs, piano mechanisms, cardboard, etc.
I always carry a handful of little tops to give away so we got to "talking" about woodturning, using gestures and sketches since we had no common language. He wanted to show me his lathe. He brought out an old Dewalt electric drill and showed me how he clamped it to the workbench. His tools looked like they were filed from screwdrivers.
