Last Friday was Paula’s birthday. When it comes to presents, it’s pretty easy to shop for her–she loves to cook and play in the kitchen. This birthday was no different, and I already knew that she wanted a narrow whisk.

It was pretty easy finding one that was fairly narrow, but it looked super generic and cheap. I also wanted to add a personal touch since this was a gift.

I started by removing the plastic handle. At first I wasn’t sure how to do it, but I resorted to the tried-and-true method of baby sledge hammer and anvil. Seems to work every time!

The inner plug had a molded plastic part around it. Since I was planning on inserting it into a turned wooden handle, I needed to shave it down a bit. The bandsaw made short work of this…followed by a little trimming with a box knife.

I used part of a maple block for the handle. After sawing out the blank, I marked it with a circle and cut off the corners on the bandsaw.

After marking the center point, I put the roughed out block on the lathe. I like to turn something about this size at 700 - 800 rpm. I haven’t any idea if this is correct or not, but it feels pretty good to me.

I rough cut the block into a cylinder using a small gouge.

I then used the gouge to approximate the handle shape in the cylinder. I didn’t have a drawing to go by, or I would have used calipers at this stage to be sure I was accurate. Instead, I just periodically stopped the lathe to feel the handle until I found a size that was nice.

After smoothing the final form out with a curved scraper, I sanded it at 1400 rpm with a variety of grits. I used a pointed tool to dig deeply into the top and bottom end so only about a half inch of wood was holding each end. This makes it a lot easier to cut the scrap off and then finish with filing / sandpaper.

I carefully drilled a hole in the end with a 3/4″ Forstner bit on the drill press and then epoxied the whisk into the hole. I thought I would finish the handle with laquer, but it feels so nice, I have left it raw for now. A natural oil or wax finish might be in the future, but we’ll see how it goes.