I recently made this made this wooden mug with a handle. I have made wooden travel mugs before but this was a bit different shape and I had never tried to make a handle before. The body of the mug is maple wood that turned out to have some nice figure to it. The handle is made from purpleheart and is held on by holly dowels.
The idea came when I saw these mugs at the grocery store recently and thought that I could probably do something interesting with them.
The first thing that I had to do was remove the insert since that was the part that I would be using.
When I turned it I used the chuck to hold it from the insert and padded the jaws with pieces of inner tube to avoid damaging the insert.
Here I have the body of the mug finished but it still needs a handle.
The first handle I made was not quite right (and besides that I broke it).
After that I redesigned the handle and came up with something a bit better.
Now I had to get it attached. It was a bit of a finicky job to get the holes drilled in the mug without damaging the insert but I got it done with a bit of help from a carving chisel to finish off the holes. I decided to use holly for the dowels to get some nice contrast.
Here everything is glued up but the dowels still need to be trimmed and there is still some sanding to be done.
Here is the finished mug.
