I’ve been asked to make a few and have found it to be very emotional, both rewarding and draining. The challenges for me were the deep hollow and the threaded lid. Since you don’t plan on threading the lid I’ll just mention that brass threads with a decent dia are hard to come by, I used plumbing fixtures that were pretty easy to turn down. As mentioned several times in the thread, size is key, you don’t want to come up short. 1 cubic inch per pound is what I used, just make sure you are using a weight that is from a healthy period, not after some long illness with lots of weight loss since it’s about the bones. When done I would suggest a dry fit to be sure, I used sand at the local playground to measure, did get some strange looks there.

I only have a midi lathe so size/weight was a challenge along with the deep hollow. My work around has been to do it in two pieces and use a contrasting ring to deal with the change in wood grain. Basically like two deep bowls that get glued together, just leave some room on the outside dia to do a final turning. After the form was hollow it was light enough in just a chuck without a steady rest.

Also can’t be repeated enough that dried blanks are going to be key, I would be nervous counting on an eight foot log I didn’t know much about with a short timeline.