Rowan Drinking Cup

Finished products first! A rowan wood drinking cup for a member of my LARP group, they commissioned it as a gift for a member of their nation's royal family. As such, it gets to display the royal crest.

We're taking a bit of a different approach than we usually do for our mugs, and we'll see why in a second...

This mug was made using staves cut from lengths of Rowan I ordered from Latvia (I'm US based, so that was a bit of a trek for these)! As it's all sticks, and not a slab, this made the stave making process just a little tricky...

... but not impossible! I cut these 16 pieces down to their angle and then trimmed them to a usable length.

When working with wood like this, I usually make custom jigs to keep my fingers as far away from the saw blade as possible. I know too many contractors short a finger tip or two to not treat my tools with the utmost respect.

The initial glue up! A hollow cylinder with some decent sized gaps. Fortunately, I have a strong, fast drying glue that's great for gap fill.

Top down pic of the same set up.

The bottom! This was the first bottom I'd done of this style. I usually recess it up into my mugs, but with how small this was already, I didn't want to make it any smaller.

I glued the slats together with the previously mentioned glue, and then the bottom to rest of the mug.

Post initial sanding, very happy with how it came out.

Post sanding display shot, again happy with how it turned out.

Last picture before the wood burn and exterior oil coats! At this point the inner coat was in place, it was watertight, and could have been used a is.