The making of a Nugtray™: Indian Rosewood bowl with Cocobolo lid

The first step in making the Nugtray above is a trip down to Austin Hardwoods in Denver, Colorado. They have the best selection in this area of exotic and hard-to-find woods. Today I was looking for something I haven't used much in the past and found a nice piece of East Indian rosewood. This piece was about 4 feet long and much more than I needed, but the guys at Austin's will cut it down to any size, just so long as they retain, at minimum, a two-foot piece to put back on the shelves.

Some of the other cool woods I saw today:

Once I got the rosewood home, I fired up the chop saw, cut off a nice block, and took the corners off:

Then I drilled a pretty big hole in the resulting octagon shape for mounting on the lathe:

And there it is, mounted and ready for turning with a chisel!

The sharp corners get slowly carved off the block. You can start to see some of the beautiful grain lines coming through now.

The longer the chisel wears down the block, the smoother it gets and it's beginning to look round.

At this point, I start to add some detail work like these lips and contours:

And then I begin to carve out a circular notch so that the bowl can be turned around and the base can be mounted onto the lathe. Once it gets turned over, I can begin to hollow out the inside of the bowl.

Now it's turned around and I can begin the hollowing-out process.

The bowl is taking shape and now the long process of sanding begins!

And there you have it -- a finished bowl!

But I'm not done because this Nugtray bowl needs a lid. Here's a plank of cocobolo that I already had laying around the shop. Cocobolo is a hardwood from Central America and has a unique kaleidoscope appearance. This one has lots of fiery orange and will look great on top of the darker East Indian rosewood!

The process here is the same: drill a hole into an octogon-shaped block and mount it on the lathe. Because the lid is thinner than the bowl block, I need a spacer to hold the cocobolo in place.

Revealing some of those fiery orange grains!

And now I need to make sure my lid is going to fit the bowl! Thanks to good measurements, it's a perfect, snug fit.

Now it's just a matter of finishing the contours and sanding everything smooth.

Above is the raw finished lid, and below wax has been added to bring out its fire!

There you have it, a finished Nugtray of East Indian Rosewood and Cocobolo with a glass topper cleaning tool.

The last thing to do is add it to the Nugtray.com inventory:

All images above are original photographs taken by @hanedane or @geke and depict products designed and produced exclusively by Hane Dane Craft.