Chef Tusk went to Japan and brought back a wooden plate. He wanted them for bread service at Quince, but in Walnut.

I made two samples. One in Eastern Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), the other in Peruvian Walnut (Juglans spp.) to match the bread boxes. The first few plates took me about half an hour to turn because I had to check the measurements really often, and I'm not that great of a wood turner.

From the samples they went with Peruvian Walnut, which is fine with me because it's easier to turn, but it's more expensive. The wood is really a pleasure to work with. It was more difficult finding enough boards because Peruvian Walnut can have a lot of variation with green and purple streaks through it.

This was a straight-forward turning project, and normally I wouldn't do this sort of thing, but given the circumstances I made it happen and turned 60 of the plates. You would think that making 60 of the same thing would get boring, but it didn't. It just became a game of how fast can I turn them? It went from 30 minutes down to about 10 as I learned the tricks. The finishing isn't that much fun, but I love turning wood and making sawdust.

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