I like coconut - I was opening one the other day and started wondering what I could make out of the tough, durable shells. i decided to try to make a French Knitting bobbin...
So I started by draining the water from an unopened coconut, then cutting out a circular hole in one end, using a holesaw in my drill press.
I cut a smaller hole in the opposite end
Then I marked a line around the equator of the shell - by holding a pencil at the right level, then rotating the nut against it on a flat surface.
I marked some drill centres at evenly spaced intervals on the pencil line.
I drilled them out using a 20mm spade bit - this worked surprisingly well - leaving the nut flesh inside the shell completely controls breakout - so the holes cut really cleanly.
The diameter of my coconut meant that I could fit seven 20mm holes with approximately 20mm of space between them - obviously a larger one might accommodate more.
The flesh was then quite easy to remove - and most of it wasn't wasted - I trimmed off the bits that had been in contact with a tool and washed the rest ready for eating.
I trimmed down the top and cut vertically down into the sides of each hole - to create seven fingers (at this point, it's just about possible to see it as a French knitting bobbin...
All that remained was to trim up the rough edges, sand off the fibrous outside, polish and try it out.
Fail!
Unfortunately disaster struck at this point - one of the fingers snapped right off while I was filing away at the edges - I think there must have been some kind of flaw in the material of the shell there, because it broke under quite gentle pressure.
What Went Wrong
This was a fairly small coconut and the shell seems pretty thin - so that fact was against me from the start, but I haven't given up - I'm going to try again with a larger nut, and work from the 'eye' end, where the shell seems a bit thicker anyway... Watch this space for updates.
