Some recent small turnings from the Barkwhistle Wood Shop (i.e. me):

(click photo to view larger on Flickr)

From left to right: Three Sedona rollerball pens in Stabilized Black Box Elder Burl with a Black Titanium finish; two Nouveau Bottle Stoppers in “Licorice Allsorts” acrylic with a chrome finish; and three Stratus ballpoint pens with a gun metal finish, one is purpleheart, the other two are “Midnight Forest” acrylic.

We’ve seen the stoppers before in an earlier post, but they are presented here again because all of these (except for one of the rollerballs) are soon to be shipped off to another (hopefully) happy customer.

I LOVE rollerball pens, and have landed on these Sedona’s as my favourite style. Each of the three shown here is made from a single piece of Box Elder Burl, as noted. They are “stabilized” with resins to add colour and make them smoother and more consistent to the touch, important for pens. Between the swirly burl wood and the injected resins, no two are alike and they can be full of surprises. In the case of the one on the far left, the top half and the bottom half turned out to be quite different in overall colour. You can see where the bottom colour extends into the cap a little bit, but if I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t cut and prepped the original blank myself, I’d almost think they came from two different pieces. Whether this is a feature or a bug is a matter of individual preference I guess. I kind of like it, but I would say that…