I did my standard Birthday routines — went to the wood store to pick up a nice (expensive) board of Sapele, got a haircut and then off to the shop to spend some quality time with a cooler of beer and dangerous tools. This bowl is made from that sapele but has a ring of coal in it — that’s right, coal. These are not your soft charcoal briquets but hard coal that my son uses in his blacksmithing forge. It almost looks like onyx.