Hey all. I've got a large 2" thick walnut slab (see attached pic) that I'm turning into a couple of meat boards for a customer. They really like the live edge look of the wood. They also said that they wanted a matching walnut pepper mill to go with it. After confirming the sizes of the boards, there is a portion of the bottom right (in the picture) of the slab that is going to be removed, around 8 inches or so. My thought was to incorporate this into a pepper mill. The first issue I have is the thickness. Because the slab is only about 2" thick, I'm going to have to laminate at least one piece but likely two pieces of board onto the piece to get my 3" x 3" stock - I know you generally only need 2-1/2" but I like having some wiggle room.
I want to keep as much of the bark included in the final pepper mill as possible. I have done a pepper mill before that had bark in it, though most of the bark ended up getting removed during the turn. It still ended up looking really nice and unique but again, my goal is to include as much of the bark as possible. This may be hard to explain and understand... My thoughts were to laminate a 1/2" stock on either side of the walnut piece. Then, if I use a protractor and kind of offset the center point, if you look at the square stock from the top down and orient the bark side as the "top", if the top of the "circle" from the protractor meets near the outer and mid portion of the bark, then as the stock is spinning on the lathe it would sort of function like an off-center turning and the bark would never be hit. The only other issue here that I can see would be an awkward corner where the glued laminated pieces meet up against where the bark is. See green sticky note picture for an explanation of what I mean. If I drop the center point down, I may remove that corner but I'll also be cutting into the bark. I thought about cutting a 45-degree angle into the wood where it meets the bark so that there isn't an awkward corner. At the end of the day, I'm just wondering if anyone else has attempted this and if so what your method was. Thanks!
I want to keep as much of the bark included in the final pepper mill as possible. I have done a pepper mill before that had bark in it, though most of the bark ended up getting removed during the turn. It still ended up looking really nice and unique but again, my goal is to include as much of the bark as possible. This may be hard to explain and understand... My thoughts were to laminate a 1/2" stock on either side of the walnut piece. Then, if I use a protractor and kind of offset the center point, if you look at the square stock from the top down and orient the bark side as the "top", if the top of the "circle" from the protractor meets near the outer and mid portion of the bark, then as the stock is spinning on the lathe it would sort of function like an off-center turning and the bark would never be hit. The only other issue here that I can see would be an awkward corner where the glued laminated pieces meet up against where the bark is. See green sticky note picture for an explanation of what I mean. If I drop the center point down, I may remove that corner but I'll also be cutting into the bark. I thought about cutting a 45-degree angle into the wood where it meets the bark so that there isn't an awkward corner. At the end of the day, I'm just wondering if anyone else has attempted this and if so what your method was. Thanks!