The trickiest stage here has to be shaping the outside while the lid and body are only held together by friction and a wrap of red tape. The maker handled it by padding the joint with shop towel on the lathe, taping the two pieces as one, and only checking the fit once the tape came off. That takes steady nerves, and the finished canister stands closed and opened with the joint looking clean.
The stock itself is a lovely pick. The maker bought a block of spalted burl through a weekly online wood auction, and it keeps a natural live edge on one side, which gives the little salt box real character. At the bench, the block was squared and marked with a combination square and pencil, its centers were found, and a miter saw took off one live-edge side of the blank. A mallet set the drive spur into those center points, and a roughing gouge brought the blank to a smooth cylinder between the headstock and tailstock.
From there the sequence is tidy: a parting tool and handsaw split the cylinder into body and lid, a four-jaw scroll chuck held the body for hollowing, a Forstner bit on the tailstock drilled it out, and a carbide turning tool finished the interior with a lip tenon. The lid was chucked separately and bored to match the base's inner diameter. Gouges shaped the outside profile and domed top, then the exterior was sanded through the grits, finished, and buffed while spinning, with a rotary sanding pad and buffing wheel tidying the underside. Finish went on from a tin with blue shop towels, and a heated branding iron stamped the base last.
One open point: the tin's contents are never named, so the exact finish is a mystery. I would also like to know how that tape joint survived the gouges, since any slip there would ruin both halves at once.
Project by Birdie Buster Golf . Watch it on their YouTube channel: