Five Pens for Karen, originally uploaded by rgdaniel.
Made these five “Designer” pens today, a new record! The trick is to not worry about the quality… that was a joke, they’re awesome… orders are piling up… Christmas is coming, hint hint…
From left to right, the woods are Pau Ferro, Lacewood, and Paduak, Paduak, Paduak. I’m LOVING the Pau Ferro, first time I’ve used this wood.
(click through to Flickr for larger sizes)
Having some fun with replacing the store-bought centre band with wood centre bands of contrasting material that I turn along with the pen.
The first one we saw in an earlier post, purpleheart with maple bits. The second is curly maple, the third is from a very nice piece of cherry burl, of which I have enough to make one more pen, I think.
The cherry wood was given to me by Larry Cluchey, a local turner from whom I recently had some instruction in turning. Thanks Larry!
A very productive day at the office today! My Best Pen Ever (if I do say so) made of purpleheart with a maple finger-grip area and a maple centre band (replacing the “comes with” band). Including some nice little groove details on the maple bits… not sure I can bear to part with this one…
And then the scary bit – the oil lamp… my first turning of any real size, first time using the 4-jaw chuck… I slowed the lathe WAY down to slowest speed, so it wouldn’t all explode on me… even so, when those CORNERS come whipping across the gouge tool, you hold on and hope for the best, taking tiny tiny bits of wood off at a time… worked out okay though…
The design is based on either a very fat bud vase or a nuclear cooling tower…
Just finished these two pens: One is a standard slimline in zebrawood (with a very cool “eye” feature in the grain). The other is a first try at a so called European-style pen, made from paduak (pah-DOOK).
The European-style pen is a little trickier to make. It involves cutting a tenon under where the centre band is. Consequently, the centre band is actually on the lathe during the process, and as a result of THAT, I ended up first scratching the centre band, then finally sanding away the gold plating trying to “buff it out”.
So the paduak pen won’t be leaving the house, but live and learn, next one should be perfect!
This is a comfort grip pen I made from Zebrawood… I think I like these better than the standard slim line pens, but then I have big fat hands…
Had some trouble with my lathe, had to exchange it finally as it was out-of-true, but finally got a couple of pens done… They ain’t so much pretty, or in focus, but at least I kind of know more or less what I’m doing now…
