How to Make a Dibble for Gardening Using a Lathe

Here's a great project you can make for the gardener in your life, or for yourself. It's called a garden dibble, and the deal with this is that when we're putting bulbs or something in the garden, the lines indicate inches of depth. We can poke in, make a hole, drop the bulb in, cover it back with dirt, and see the results of that a few months later. We're gonna do this through a turning process on the lathe. First thing we need to do is glue wood up, so we have a blank that's big enough to make a dibble. We want something about two and a quarter by two and a quarter. I've got hardwood slabs here, and I'm gonna do contrasting colors. I think that's gonna look really cool. Glue selection, for sure want to go with a water resistant, or a waterproof glue because of the application here. Want to make sure that once we make this thing, it's gonna stand up. I'm gonna go with the waterproof glue. I've got my surfaces prepped. They're nice and smooth, so I know they're gonna make a good glue joint. Oops. Little clamp action. Keep in mind, any time you're doing something, a glue up for turning, you for sure want to let that sit overnight so that the glue is completely cured, and there's no chance of that coming apart on you on the lathe. All right, I'm gonna let this glue dry, but I've got another blank glued up that's ready to go. So we'll go from here to the lathe, and have a look at the turning process. I roughed the cylinder to round, and we need to walk through the basic layout of this thing. Here's what we've got. The bottom end has spacing on one inch centers, so one, two, three, four, five, six. This part of the dibble's gonna be six inches long, then we need some room up here for a handle. So your overall blank needs to be around 10 inches or so. The real important part is the six inches that we're gonna produce down here. Here's what we've got going there. Six inch overall length from here to this mark. Diameters, three quarter inch at the small end, one and a half inch at the big end. So we're gonna create a tape around that end. And then up here, you can just free form it. It's nice to have a ball shape because the functionality of this thing is that you grab it, and you push it into the ground and make a hole. So it's nice to have a gear shift shape up here so that, manual transmission, so that you can have that comfortable in your hand. I'm gonna get mine marked out, and we'll go from there. All right, that's looking pretty good. I'm gonna pull my tool rest, do just a little bit of sanding on this, and then we'll look at the layout for the lines and how to make that happen. All right. Our lines are one inch, one inch, one inch, one inch starting at the bottom. And... Here's the way to pull that off. Use a tool rest. We're not gonna run the lathe right now, but it's nice to have a spot to put your pencil. Measuring from the bottom, we're gonna go an inch, and another one. Then with the tool rest, pencil tip on the line, the hash mark your just made, give that a little bit of a spin. Doesn't really have to go all the way around. I just want to make the line a little bit more visible for our next step. All right, next up what we're gonna do is go back to the parting tool and use the point, with the parting tool flat on the tool rest. Let that point come in, make a V, make a V, make a V. And you don't have to go very deep. Just enough to penetrate the surface of the dibble down here. Just by eye, I'm trying to make them uniform in depth. Now, here's a pretty cool part of this. We're gonna darken those by burning them. And I'm using, for that, guitar string off an acoustic guitar, steel string, I believe that is the D string, and mounted between two dowels so that I can pull it like this and put pressure on. Now, any wire is gonna work. What I like about guitar strings for this is they're really robust, and they'll stand up for a long time. Get the guitar string in the V, and then just put some pressure on it. Pressure means friction, friction means heat, heat means burning. There we go. And then sometimes the delineation between the burn in the wood is a little muddy, and what'll make it crisper is to come back and sand just real lightly again. And that'll make that a lot sharper on each side. That is looking great. Last step is gonna be finishing. Let me grab my finishing stuff. Be right back, and we'll get a coat on here. I'm gonna use linseed oil. It's a great finish for stuff that's gonna be outside. More specifically, it's boiled linseed oil. Little paper towel down on the bed, in case I have the drippies. So here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna want to get a couple of coats of linseed oil on this. I'll let this one dry. If it feels a little nubby after that, I'll sand, then I'll do another coat. Then it's gonna come off the lathe, and I'll cut these ends off, sand those, get some linseed oil on. Next step, take it to the garden, or wrap it up and put a ribbon on it, and give it to the gardener in your life. And that is our nearly finished dibble. Back to that glue up step. Like we talked about, we've got choices here, water resistant, waterproof. Because of the application of this, I went with the waterproof glue. So get her glued up, get her on the lathe and spin here. Great gift for a gardener.