What’s a noggin? It’s a small, carved wooden cup carried by frontiersmen, often carved from pretty burl wood. This one is just cherry. It will hang from a chunky button on a string that goes under a belt, so the prospective Dan’l Boone has it handy to get a drink out of the crick with, and doesn’t have to take his eyes off the dangerous woods by lying down to get a drink.
Bandsawn blank out of a piece of thick cherry I had on hand.
Using a Forstner bit to begin roughing out the hollow. No reason to make this painful… Do the drilling now while the bottom is still flat… An old timer would have carved this out of a burl while it was still green (wet) so the carving would be easy. I’m using well seasoned cherry so carving this strictly by hand would take many days of painful hand labor.
Smaller Forstner bit to continue the hollowing. Don’t let the drilling get too close to the bottom or sides, and remember there is a small brad point on the Forstner bit that penetrates farther than the flat bottom of the hole…we don’t want the cup to leak.
I’ve been wanting a set of crook knives for a number of years now, and made one to test out the concept. It works great! Now I need several more with differing amounts of “crook.”
Speaking of painful, I decided to cheat a bit and roughout the noggin with my Foredom flexshaft grinder and several shapes of Typhoon carbide burrs. This makes mountains of fine dust, so a good dust mask is mandatory.
And, starting to refine the interior with the crook knife. It works really well, and leaves a nice texture. I’ll be carving the inside and outside off and on for the next week or so.