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Woodturning – A Coffee Mug

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A nine-minute video turns a discarded apple log into a mug you could actually drink your coffee from.

Matt Jordan, an Auckland-based woodturner who picked up the craft in 2014, built his channel on hybrid pieces that mix timber with burls and poured resin. In “Woodturning – The Coffee Mugs,” also circulated under the title “Woodturning – A Coffee Mug,” he strips that formula back to basics: a single apple log, a lathe, and 9 minutes and 6 seconds of footage showing exactly how a solid block of orchard wood becomes a mug with even walls and a comfortable grip.

• The video runs 9:06 and documents Jordan turning a functional coffee mug from a small applewood log on a lathe.
• Jordan mounts the raw blank, shapes the exterior profile, then hollows the interior to achieve uniform wall thickness for a smooth drinking chamber.
• He works around the natural grain, texture, and moisture content specific to orchard wood, shaping proportions meant to sit comfortably in the hand while holding a hot drink.

From Orchard Log to Lathe Blank

Apple wood isn’t the first material most turners reach for. It’s dense, prone to moisture movement, and comes in short, irregular sections rather than the long straight stock preferred for bowl blanks. Jordan works with what an apple log actually gives him — a compact section mounted directly onto the lathe — and roughs the exterior down to a cylinder before refining the profile with progressively lighter cuts, the same sequencing he’s used on his resin-and-burl pieces documented in projects like his off-grid workshop build.

Hollowing Out the Drinking Chamber

The technical center of the video is the hollowing pass — removing material from the interior while keeping the outer wall consistent so the mug doesn’t end up lopsided or fragile at the rim. Jordan takes this slowly, checking wall thickness as he goes rather than rushing the cut, since applewood’s density makes it easy to punch through if the tool bites too deep.

Nine minutes and six seconds, one apple log, and a mug that didn’t exist an hour before.

Jordan’s Signature Hybrid Style

Outside this particular build, Jordan’s catalog leans heavily on drinkware and travel mugs finished with resin accents and food-safe coatings, pieces designed to highlight rather than hide a board’s knots, spalting, or bark inclusions — an approach shared by other hands-on craft channels featured alongside his work, including the step-by-step weaving process in this pine-needle basket project. The coffee mug video strips that signature back for a simpler, single-material piece, but the same instinct for showing every stage of the process — no jump cuts past the hard parts — carries through.

Jordan’s channel keeps returning to the same pitch: take a piece of wood most people would burn or toss, and turn it into something that gets used every morning. The applewood mug is the plainest version of that idea he’s posted, no resin pour required.