Colorful Salt/Pepper Grinders

Our challenge for our last Badger Woodturners' meeting was to turn a salt/pepper grinder. I turned three, using some laminated dyed beech wood blanks that I had won in a raffle at a meeting last year. As you can see, the color and the effects of turning this material can be quite striking. The mechanisms in these are ceramic crush grinders; these adjust for fineness of grind with a knob at the bottom of the grinder. In the tall grinder (to which I also added a captive ring) there is a stem which extends from the grinding mechanism in the base up into the turnable top (which simply pulls off to fill the grinder with peppercorns or salt chunks). In the two smaller grinders the tops directly press onto the grinding mechanisms in the bases. The tall grinder is 11" high. The green one with the pointed top is 6" high; and the short, round one is 4 1/2" high. All of them are about 2 1/4" in diameter at their widest.