I make these hand-threaded wooden salt and pepper shakers using native Maine hardwoods, which are famously too soft and finicky for traditional hand-chased threads. Dense exotic woods can be threaded directly on the wood lathe, but our local species in New England won’t hold clean, durable threads on their own. To solve this, I engineered a custom threading setup that uses a high-speed cutter to mechanically cut precise threads into these softer hardwoods. This lets me create reliable wooden threaded shakers that remain plastic-free.