22/01/2023
Latest project/experiment, shrink pot tankards. These two are entirely made from local maple.
Since coming back to Minnesota I’ve been experimenting with shrink pots. But in addition to making your standard shrink pot, I wanted to try something a little different.
I wanted to see if you could make a beer/mead tankard from a shrink pot. The obvious problem would be the sealing of the base so no liquid would seep out. Because I try to create all my pieces with as many natural materials as possible I chose to seal the inside and the outside of the seam on the base with locally sourced beeswax.
The next hurdle was the handle. I’ll post some photos in a couple days of the various ways I made and attached handles to different pieces but ultimately I settled with this style. The branch handle is seated onto branch slices to give enough room for fingers to grasp it comfortably. Then the inner bark of a maple tree branch is stripped, dried, rehydrated and stretched tightly around the tankard and handle. The strap is held on both sides by small wood plugs. This is the only part of the piece I’m not 100% happy with and will be brainstorming different ways to clean this area up 😅
The only part of this project that isn’t sourced from nature is the wood glue used to hold the branch handle together, but in the future I’m planning to collect pine pitch to make glue for this purpose.
In addition to the beeswax seal they are finished with my beeswax and coconut oil mixture.
