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Wonder what happens with bag of coffee beans on the lathe? Let’s find out!
For starters, no project has ever smelled so good!
When I began woodturning the coffee beans into a coffee mug I had no idea what to expect. I just wanted to do a little something different. Would it even hold together? Would I find air pockets all over given all the small cracks and crevices between and inside the coffee beans? Which would make the piece too weak to cut into anything of use. This was more of a long shot experiment than a potentially successful project. I did not have high hopes for this to turn out well.
You might have noticed I ran my PSI up to 80 instead of the usual 60 PSI in the pressure chamber given all of the small places for air to hide. I have a strong feeling this helped because in certain spots the walls of tumbler were sanded down thinner than the width of a coffee bean. Impossible to do without the cup collapsing in on itself! So I thought.
Another thing you may notice is after doing the initial shaping and drilling on the coffee mug, not a single blade touched the coffee bean/epoxy mixture for the rest of the project- only on the spalted oak base and lid were metal tools used again. All of the shaping was done with heavy grit sandpaper because it's a lot less aggressive on the already thin cup. That's how careful I wanted to be with the pice after an unexpectedly successful (but very slow) drilling process.
In case you were wondering, I did go back and coat the entire cup in a food grade epoxy. I didn't have any on hand at the time of the video. Here's the link to the stuff I used:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: After decades of wood working (wood turning, sculpting, building projects) I’ve developed unique techniques when putting certain tools to use. In some cases this is very dangerous and not recommended for you to try. If you decide to use tools like those presented in my videos, please follow their intended uses and directions.