I saw this idea from Wood Magazine somewhere a while back and saved a picture to give one a shot. Last week I got around to it.
I used spalted Tamarind for the body. I had to soak it with CA glue as I turned it to make the wood hard enough to get a finish I was happy with.
But after several soakings and some scraping and sanding, I was satisfied.
The body is about 2" at the top and about 1-3/8" at the bottom. I finished the lid and body with some homemade friction polish while they were still on the lathe.
I have a habit of keeping small pieces of woods I really like just for stuff like this. I used a tiny piece of Desert Ironwood left over from a pen blank to turn the finial. The "bucket" that holds the toothpicks is from an offcut of Cocobolo from a hand plane knob I turned. And the stem connecting the lid and bucket is a small piece of Olivewood that was too small to even put on the lathe so I shaped it with a carving knife and piece of sandpaper.
The Cocobolo has some of my friction polish on it. No finish on the Olive. And the Ironwood has friction polish and a single coat of wipe-on poly since it's the piece that will be handled all the time.
Thanks for looking. Comments and questions welcomed as always!
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