Salt Shaker: Recycled Water bottle

Keith Palmer

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84
Location
Tacoma, WA
I was asked a while back to turn a salt shaker for a friend to match a peppermill he already had.

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He gave me a blank to turn the shaker out of, it was an experimental Baseball Bat from Weyerhaeuser. I traced and measured diameters and gave him the mill back. Finally 6 months later I got around to it. I had talked with him and he was in no rush. I turned it Christmas day on my new toy, the beads are not as pronounced as I would like though. As I was boring the center hole it only went about 1" and then I was cutting air. About 4 inches of the blank was hollow! Man did I luck out on where I cut the 2 ends to be. So I was worried I would cut into the cavity as I shaped the shaker.

I bought the top from Craftsupplies, but did not want to use the rubber bung. I know how overtime they can end up not fitting well, so I wanted to seal it up good. I decided to cut the top off of a water bottle I had and try epoxying it into the bottom and it worked quite well.

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That's a very clever concept... would not have thought of it myself...is the water bottle threaded part glued on the outside or were you able to get it inside the shaker and glue from inside??:thumb:

Edit: After taking another look, disregard this question... I can see how it's done from the pictures... still a very clever concept....a new more logical question.... how did you cut the water bottler so it's clean and round at the neck?
 
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That's a very clever concept... would not have thought of it myself...is the water bottle threaded part glued on the outside or were you able to get it inside the shaker and glue from inside??:thumb:

Edit: After taking another look, disregard this question... I can see how it's done from the pictures... still a very clever concept....a new more logical question.... how did you cut the water bottler so it's clean and round at the neck?


Chuck, I cut the bottle about an 1/8" below the flange with a sharp utility knife.

As I am typing this I just thought of an idea: you could bore a hole in a small scrap on the lathe and glue in an extra cap, screw the bottle to the cap and use a skew or gouge to cut a nice clean neck line. That would sure be safer than fighting the utility knife:thumb:.

I made sure to spread some of the epoxy on the flat of the flange as well as the neck of the bottle when gluing it in.
 
Good job all around!! They look like a matched pair, and the clever idea :huh: you had the brain turned to the on position that time! :thumb::thumb::D That is one cool idea that I will try to write down somewhere as I think I lost the little safety switch that goes in the on button for my brain! :rofl::rofl:
 
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