I had a thought the other day(yeah I get one of those on occasion), "How would a hole saw work to hollow mini birdhouses" and that went to "Hey maybe I could reuse the core". Take a look and tell me what you think. I will probably only work with cross-grain blanks because of having to "break" the core out at its bottom.
Had a fairly large(for a birdhouse) diameter Cedar blank, went to Lowe's and picked up a cheaper 1.25" hole saw and proceeded as shown. The top row of thumbnails is making the core into a bottle stopper. In the second thumbnail I am enlarging the through hole for the size of my bottle stopper mandrel tap.
In the 2nd row I have turned a piece of Honey locust into a jam chuck and used it to finish turning and finishing the birdhouse. Turned a roof for it out of another piece of Honey locust.
In the third row I have processed the "jam chuck" into another bottle stopper.
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Here are closeups of the finished stoppers and the birdhouse. The cabochons are turned from the 1/2"-3/4" pen blank left over offcuts. My apologies for the close ups of the cabochons being a little out of focus. Not use to doing macro close ups.
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C&C Welcomed.