PHOTOSBYJASON^ ZENTEREven an ordinary kitchen
tool can be beautiful.
By Tim Heil
PROJECT #1921_
Skill Level:
Intermediate
Time: One day
Cost: $25If you’re looking for an easy-to-make
gift for someone who loves to cook, here
it is: a custom-made rolling pin. There’s
something about this humble tool that
really appeals to the imagination. Once I
got started making rolling pins, I couldn’t
stop. I took a dozen diff erent ones to a
charity auction, and guess what outsold
everything else?
While you could make a rolling pin from
one long chunk of wood, my rolling pins
have separate handles. When you grip the
handles, the body of the rolling pin is free
to rotate. Of course, that’s not a new de-
sign, but I’ve played around with handles
quite a bit. Sometimes I make them from
diff erent species than the body or add
ferrules just for show. I like to make the
rolling pin’s body from a visually striking
wood and the handles from wood with less
fi gure or a more subdued color. All of my
handles are made in the same, simple way.
An ordinary carriage bolt passes all the
way through them, and the carriage bolt
is epoxied into the rolling pin’s body. You
might ask, “How do you keep the epoxy
from squeezing out and gluing the handle,
too?” Well, I’ve got an elegant solution for
that—as you’ll see later on.