Ingenious construction on the lathe

Years ago, in the days of small children, one of the yellow pegs in our Ingenious game went missing. We found a bit of matchstick to replace it, and with a little yellow marker it became part of the set.

Tonight, a now rather older child and I set down to play Ingenious. Afterwards, I asked about playing another game. “How about modeling the missing peg to print a new one?” It was a bit too small to print well, but I had some ¼" brass stock, and brass is yellow, so down we went to the mini-lathe. I supervised and instructed only. :tada:

Some facing, DRO tricks, turning, filing, chamfering, and parting later and we have a replacement peg in brass. Here an original is flanked by the now-ancient matchstick and the new brass peg.

The harsh light makes the surface look bad in the 7x zoomed-in picture. We could have polished it, but to the eye it looks fine and it was getting late, so we stopped here. That head is 4.4mm across and 2mm thick, for scale.

They did a great job for such a small piece. Some of my fondest memories are of my father teaching me how to use machine shop tools.