In an effort to post more, here is an oak cup I turned recently and mentioned briefly in a weekly post that I think deserves its own post.

I’ve had this piece of oak in the workshop for a couple years. I roughed it round at some point and abandoned whatever I had in mind for it, so I’ve kicked it around for a while. I noticed it and thought, “Ah! A perfect cup for holding my long fly tying feathers.” Sometimes it takes years and the right circumstance to see the finished piece in raw wood.

I didn’t take photos of the process, but here is what I did:

1. Chucked with the spur drive
2. Finished roughing it out with a roughing gouge
3. Turned a tenon on the end
4. Reversed in the Nova chuck jaws
5. Horizontally bored out most of the center with 1 5/8″ forstner bit
6. Removed the rest of the material with a bowl gouge, mostly using scraping cuts
7. Sanded the outside with sandpaper
8. Sanded the inside with sandpaper wrapped around the end of a thick cardboard tube
9. Cut the grooves with a skew, then used guitar string to burn them in
10. Buffed with 0000 steel wool
11. Cut off the lathe with a parting tool
12. Coated with Tried and True Original
13. Bugged again with 0000 steel wool

This now lives on my fly tying desk and holds the larger feathers (pheasant tails, turkey feathers, and soon peacock eyes.) I love that it has bug damage! The spalting complements my tool caddy nicely.