Learning on the Lathe

Those of you who have seen my earlier projects know that I have to go visit my brother if I want to do any woodworking as I don’t have a shop or any space to work. I just got back from such a trip and we both learnt a little about turning as he had borrowed a lathe for the week. Here are some of our finished projects.
Picture 1: We turned a few pencils and a pen. My brother did the very top one and the very bottom one and I did the centre one. The first is a pencil turned from bocote, the second a pencil turned from what was labelled amboyna burl at Lee Valley but I have my doubts about that, and the third one is a pen turned from paduak.
Picture 2: At some point I would really like to make a nice chess set with turned pieces. These three were just freehand attempts at getting the right shapes. I did the rook first and the the queen out of walnut. The king is cedar. In the background was my most ambitious project. It is a celtic knot made out of maple turned in a walnut blank. I saw this on the internets and really liked it so I thought I’d give it a try. It turned out all right; the maple chipped durning the turning process and tore out a big chunk but some wood filler should take care of that. I wanted to use this to make a new handle for a flush cut saw that I have but I ran out of time before I had to come home. Oh well, there is always next time.

As usual, comments are welcome, I’d love some tips for keeping that maple from chipping while turning.