When my cousin Elizabeth had a baby, I figured it would be a good opportunity to make a rattle. I decided to make one that looked as if it was just a single piece of wood with accent stripes.

I turned a blank round, beginning the shape of a bulb for the head of the rattle. I cut a shallow channel that would serve two purposes – it would be the tenon for the mortise in the top. At the top of the channel, I used a thin parting tool to part the two pieces.

When them separated, I could hollow out each independently. The top also received a mortise that could accept that tenon. I didn’t want to make the mortise very deep, lest it ruin the illusion of the grain being continuous. At the same time, it has to be deep enough to have good glue surface area.

I added seed beads for the rattle, and then glued the two halves together. It’s important to ensure at this point that the grain is as well-aligned as possible.

I used a normal parting tool to clean up the shallow channel to receive inlace. First the coarsest stones are applied and saturated in superglue. One dried, they are turned even with the surface. Successively finer stones are used to fill in the gaps, saturated with CA glue (superglue) until the final shape can be turned, sanded and polished.