Last December, I made a wooden cat on the lathe. The shape got me thinking.

We have the remains of two former pets, our cats Neo and Dozer. Could I learn how to do some hollowing and make a pair that could be urns?

The first hurdle is that I didn’t own any hollowing tools, nor have any experience using them. So I just sat on the idea, thinking about it every now and again.

Last month I decided it was time to give it a try. I ordered the Robert Sorby RS200KT, a pair of Threaded Rings For Urn, and some spindle blanks from Got Wood? LLC.

I first tried my hand at the RS200KT, making a small hollow form bowl. That didn’t go horribly, so I finally gave in and gave it a shot.

I startd with 4×4″ hard maple spindles.

I chucked them up and got to work.

First was to round out and true up the blanks.

Then I pulled out my steady reset so I could begin shaping the bottom and get to work on hollowing.

The urn rings I purchased were the 1.5″ diameter set. So I first used a 2″ forstner bit to drill out a hole about 1/2″ deep and following it up with a 1 1/2″ forstner bit to drill out to the desired depth (around 5-6″ deep, if I recall correctly).

Then I got to work hollowing. Sadly, I was too focused to get any photos. After hollowing, I removed the steady rest and pulled up the tail stock with a bull nose live center for support. That let me turn the outside of the body without any problem, just like before.

The Final Result

The black cat’s eyes were turned out of lignum vitae, whereas the grey cat’s are maple (dyed). Both noses are ebony and the whiskers are leather.

I dyed the black cat with two coats of india ink. They grey was dyed with two coats of highly diluted black General Finishes TransTint. Both then coated with lacquer

Small disclaimer, I did have a failure on making the second body. Being new to hollowing as I am, I turned too thin and had to start over!

I absolutely love the final result. I still need to put lacquer on the bottoms, which I’ll get done soon. And finally, I’m going to turn and laser small pendants for them, to include their names and dates.

Thanks for checking it out 🙂