While I haven't been a regular poster to this particular blog for a while, it's time for me to go on hiatus for a bit. I'm having arthroscopic shoulder surgery on June 22, and I'll be typing-challenged for a while after that. Currently, recovery time for the procedure could be from 3 weeks to 6 months, depending on what they actually do inside my shoulder. We know they're going to reshape my AC joint, remove some small bone spurs, and look at a small tear in the labrum. If that's all that's done, the recovery should be short. If they have to do more than that, then we'll be down a little longer.

At any rate, my online activities are going to be seriously limited for the next few weeks, so only the really easy or really important stuff will get done. I do plan to update status via Twitter which will also update my Facebook status as well, and the 140-character limits will probably be about all I can muster from my iPhone for the near future.

Thanks for all the well-wishes for surgery, I'm just ready to get it behind me!

Fortunately, Stinkwood doesn't, at least while it's on the lathe. I wasn't really sure what I'd be getting into when I selected this blank for a letter opener for Anna, but was pleasantly surprised while working with it. And not just because it didn't smell bad.

This wood was surprisingly easy to work with, and it turned very quickly. Unfortunately, it didn't look like it was going to be anything special to look at while it was on the lathe. Once I sanded and finished it, though, it really did develop into a nice piece. I'll get better pics of this and the dymondwood pen after the hiatus.

I need to find a letter opener kit that uses a standard 2" segment for turning. The last two letter openers I've done had 2 3/8" segments, and that just enough longer than the throw on my drill press that it made boring the hole a little difficult. So I'm still experimenting with kits as well as woods.

I should also point out that the Stinkwood blank also came from Zambezi Exotics.

This pen was made from a red and blue (duh) dymondwood blank set. A friend had cautioned me about some of the troubles she had with dymondwood, and I found out that she was spot on with her assessment (not that I doubted her in the least). These blanks were really difficult to turn (took almost an hour to turn this pen) and I splintered a previous set of dymondwood blanks, but I think I'll be able to salvage that in another project that will be posted later. The real problem came from the resins and glues used to laminate the colored wood in these blanks. The final result looks nice, but it was a hard road to get there, and I'm not quite sure that the end result was really worth the effort.

Again, no special turning, sanding, or finishing techniques used on this pen. And no, I don't plan on making a matching pencil. This was the only blank I got of this color/pattern. When I finish the other project I'll post it, but that will be well after the hiatus.

The Wild Olive blank I used on this pen was also from Zambezi Exotics, but this one I knew would turn out really nicely, so I took pictures of the entire process. First, I started with the complete blank:



Next, I cut the blank into segments for the pen sections. The pen segments are just over 2" long, and the blank is 6", so there's a small chunk left over.



Then I used the drill press to bore the hole through the middle of the blank so a brass tube can be inserted. This brass tube is what the rest of the pen kit pieces mount to. This process is cumbersome enough that I generally try to cut and drill several sets of blanks at the same time.



After gluing the brass tubes into the blanks and letting the glue set, I put the blanks on the mandrel then put the mandrel on the lathe. Now the blanks are ready to turn.



I rounded off the corners to get each blank into a cylinder shape.



Then I turned the blanks down into the final pen shape.



Next I applied the shellac/wax finish to the segments.



Finally, I assembled the rest of the kit into the final pen. Here it is next to the leftover segment from the original blank.



I really like the way this particular pen turned out, so I'll take the other Wild Olive blank I have and use it for something similar. There's a good chance I'll do other work with this wood, as it was relatively easy to work with and looks really good as a finished project.

Another sample pen blank I got from Zambezi Exotics that looked really good as a blank, but I wasn't that thrilled with the results. That may be mostly because this was the most difficult wood I've worked with to date. It took well over a half hour to turn this blank down, mostly because my tools kept heating up from the turning process (very hard wood). Plus, the ends of the blanks chipped away right as I was finishing the turns, so some of the edges are rough. This is not a sample I'll be selling. For me, it just doesn't look as good as I had hoped it would. I still have another blank of this that I might turn into a pencil just to see if I have better luck with a different blank, but I'm not hopeful.

Of course, someone else might see this and think it's really beautiful, and if so, let me know because I'll make you a heck of a deal. :)

The pen was a standard turn with sanding and Shellawax finish with no stain or coloring.

I turned the pencil of this pairing a couple of months ago and finally turned the pen today. This is still my favorite wood to work with right now. Silky Oak, which I got as part of a wood sampler kit from http://www.zambeziexotics.com/, is a softer wood, turning quickly, but it also has a great pattern and color, and has an interesting light reflection pattern that just doesn't reproduce well in a photo.

Both of these were standard turns, followed by sanding and a Shellawax finish without stain or coloring.

I'll be getting more blanks of this wood and turning a number of different projects with it.

This was the first "comfort pen" I turned and I still have a few tricks to learn for this particular style. The wood was a scrap from an old black walnut tree on the Hillyard farm. When the tree was taken down, a good portion of the tree was planed into sheets that my brother-in-law used to build some projects for my nephews. There were some pen-sized blanks left over, and I took one of those scraps to turn into this pen. This will go to Anna's grandfather for his birthday, and I hope he appreciates the circle to get this piece back to him.

The wood was fairly easy to turn, a little harder than some of the woods I've been experimenting with, but not nearly as difficult to work with as others. After turning, the piece was sanded and finished with plain Shellawax. No stain or color was used in the finish.

I'm hoping that I can get more of these scraps to work with. The color and pattern of the wood looks good and it was nice to work with on the lathe.

Labels: pen, turning