Kaj, I just had an idea for your lathe. Put in some sort of guard rail that's parallel with the mid axis of the lathe, say 3 inches from the axis. Say you want to make an two inch diameter rolling pin, you measure 2 inches from the end of whatever tool you use for shaping the wood, and put a clamp at that point. Resting the tool against the guard rail, the clamp won't let the tool go closer than one inch from the axis, and you'd get a perfect 2 inch cylinder. Pretty quickly even, I think.
I wonder what happened to the better half's grandfathers lathe. I hope her uncle has it somewhere still. He hogged all the good stuff from his wood working shed. We were still living in an apartment at that point, so I didn't have anywhere to put all the stuff.
How about some pictures of your projects? It would be nice to see. I'm going to have to build a bunny hutch and run soon, I threw together a mobile tractor and it's pretty much finished now, our bunny is coming tomorrow. But I don't want the tractor to be her permanent residence, especially when we get her pregnant.