Two Pens – African Spalted Stinkwood and Coffee Beans in White Acrylic, originally uploaded by rgdaniel.

The stinkwood is quite subtle, but rewards deep gazing… like a burl almost… not sure how much actual spalting made it into the finished pen here…

The coffee bean pen is anything but subtle… actual coffee beans embedded in white acrylic… it’s actually not bad to work, compared to pure acrylic… the coffee beans just turn to powder, or to coffee grounds I guess… smells like Starbucks when you’re working it… but it leaves a lot of little voids, which need filling with crazy glue and the coffee powder… I missed a few here, but still, not too bad… The centre band is purpleheart.

I had two blanks, and cut them to length in preparation for a larger one-piece pen style I’ll be trying out next. The resulting two offcuts were just the right size to combine for this pen. Waste not, want not…