66 Cocobolo Handles - Part 1

The Moon Tower Inn in Houston, Texas contacted me about making them some handles out of Cocobolo for their new bar. I was a little surprised when they wanted 66! That must be some bar setup they have. I guess everything is bigger in Texas. While that many handles at once was my largest single order to date, I didn't let that stop me. I geared up for full scale assembly line, Henry Ford style, except instead of a workforce, I had just me. And instead of an assembly line, I had the workbench. Repeating every step in the process 66 times can be monotonous, but I got really good at every one of those steps by the end of the order. Here's some pics from the order.
Here's the raw pieces of Cocobolo.

They are 4'' square and a little over a foot long. It was most of what I could find in the LA area, and not cheap.

I cut the blocks into slabs just over 1'' thickness. You can already see the beautiful grain of the wood. It is everything from yellow and pink to orange and brown.

A close-up of the wood grain and color.

The slabs get ripped down to square blanks and cut to 6'' lengths. Here they are ready to start turning. I'll post the rest next.