Oak feather cup

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:

Chucked with the spur drive

Finished roughing it out with a roughing gouge

Turned a tenon on the end

Reversed in the Nova chuck jaws

Horizontally bored out most of the center with 1 5/8″ forstner bit

Removed the rest of the material with a bowl gouge, mostly using scraping cuts

Sanded the outside with sandpaper

Sanded the inside with sandpaper wrapped around the end of a thick cardboard tube

Cut the grooves with a skew, then used guitar string to burn them in

Buffed with 0000 steel wool

Cut off the lathe with a parting tool

Coated with Tried and True Original

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.