Just to pass on a moment of joy. Tonight I turned a short (6cm shaft) test peg from cocobolo. (The blocks I was able to get are 15" long, so there is a 3" wastage that I'm using for practice). I opened a beer, turned on the TV, and sat with my home made shaper grinding away. As I got the rough peg deeper and deeper into the shaper I noted that at all times I was getting shavings off the full length, right down to the last turn. Never believed it would happen first try. And the peg worked well in a set of test blocks reamed to different widths. Now to see if I can shape the head nicely.
The correlary joy came from finding I can get four pegs out of each length of the 1 5/16 square block by halving it then cutting the halves at a mild diagonal. It leaves a flat at the head, but I haven't had a problem with break out. So the three blocks I bought, expecting six pegs per block, will make me 36 pegs - and a number of end pegs. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html