I had a small piece of ash gash lying around, and thought it could be utilized for something more noble than barbecuing bacon cheese sausages on the fire pan (as if that is not THE noble end for wood…). What was I thinking…?

I started out by chopping off a small piece I thought could be the lid. I used a hole saw to create a smal round tenon, like so:

I then drilled out what would be the container cavity, using an auger bit:

After cutting the piece square, I had my container blank:

I marked the corners using the 45° on my combination square, which I placed so that it created a tangent to the circle I drew to show the perimeter of the container.

Using a hand plane, I planed down the corners to the lines.

Afterwards, I continued to round over the edges, like so:

After a short while, I had a mostly round cylinder:

I adjusted the shape further using my hand plane, until it was satisfactory. To perfect the shape, I inserted the auger bit and screwed it in until it “grabbed” the wood. After putting the auger bit into my drill press, I used a sanding block and some 80 grit Mirka Abranet to finalize the shape. I was not going for perfectly round, just “roundish”. You know, “good enough”. There’s reason to the madness: a perfectly round thingamabob rolls off the table!

Here’s a picture of the setup; I lowered the drill press so that the bottom was just clear of the OSB piece. This was to ensure that if anything loosened, I would not have a piece of wood flying off in a random direction, of which I could be standing right smack in the middle of…

Using this setup I sanded the cylinder smooth in no time.

On the next page, we’ll look at the lid. That did not work out quite how I had thought…