My mother turns 68 on Tuesday, so my kids said we should make her a candy box, you know, something to put next to the sofa to hide her stash from marauding grandchildren. I bought two big pieces of birdseye pine several years ago and I also had some nice spalted maple boards, so I paired them up. I’m not sure if it came out as too busy, but in the end, my mother will love it for what it is. The finish is 6 coats of high gloss lacquer. Now if I can only prevent those chocolates from melting on the priority mail journey from Georgia to New York I’ll be in good shape…

OK, so I don’t have a lot of money, nor do I have a lot of equipment. In fact, other than my 20+ year old $99 Craftsman table saw and some hand tools, the only extravagance I own is the Delta Midi Lathe I bought with a Christmas bonus 4 years ago. We were living just outside of Cincinnati and there was a guy who sold S2S lumber at the local flea market every week. I bough a few mantle sized pieces of cherry and spalted maple and if memory serves me they were like $20. It was one of those situations where I couldn’t justify to my wife all the wood that I COULD have bought since the deals were so good…

Anyway, we moved to Georgia recently and I fould LumberJocks a few weeks ago and it’s like having your own personal muse… I look at the projects every day and wish and want until the cows come home. I have plans to ask Santa for some type of dovetail jig this Christmas, but like the last couple of years that will take a backseat to making sure my 3 year old and 5 year old get taken care of first. Times may be tough, but they can always get better…

So I hand cut a bowl blank from the end of the cherry mantle and a few hours later I have a very serviceable snack bowl. Other than the two peppermills I turned when I first got the lathe, this seems to be my grandest effort to date. The one on the left is unfinished cherry, I used a Dremel tool to carve the branches since there was a sizeable inclusion inside the wood. The other is a simple laminated mill that I practiced a few techniques on. Thanks you to all who welcomed me here and to everyone else who serves as inspiration to a guy who makes do with what he’s got.