The stem is bored before it is shaped. A long bit is worked down the centre of the blank while the wood still has enough bulk around it to hold the line straight. Bore a stem that has already been brought down to its taper and the bit wanders, then breaks out through the side, and the piece is finished before it started.

The spiral is cut, not turned. The carver sets the lead of the twist by eye at the thick end and then works down the stem with a knife, lifting the same weight of shaving on every pass so the rope stays even as the wood narrows underneath it. This is the slow stage and the one that decides the piece. A twist that drifts cannot be corrected, only thrown.

Colour goes on last as a stain worked in by hand and then cut back with oil, which is why the red sits darker down in the grooves than it does on the raised rope. The brass is fitted after that: a strip of sheet hammered around the joint, filed flush to the wood and burnished until it holds light. The clay bowl seats into the finished end.