Two Carbara Pens, originally uploaded by rgdaniel.
Two new pens in a new format I’m trying, called “Carbara”. One is the coffee beans in white acrylic seen earlier in a standard slimline, and the other — just in time for Christmas — is my Halloween pen… orange acrylic with black chrome fittings…
These pens are a little shorter in overall length than the previous styles, but with lots of heft in the hand. Nice balance overall, not too heavy.
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…
Two Acrylic Pens, originally uploaded by rgdaniel.
Plastic pens. Hmmm. Do I file this under “Woodworking Projects”?
They turned out better than I feared, and in fact they look better in real life than they do here — I think the flash gets INSIDE the plastic and scatters a bit, causing the visual noise. I toned it down a bit with the dust filter, but still. And that’s the other thing… being plastic, they attract every bit of dust in the room… static cling… and the turning process was horrible, I won’t be doing this again… but they look okay I think… couple of flaws but not bad…
These are available (i.e. not part of an order) Species include (l-r) curly maple (2), cherry (2), walnut (4) and a lone pau ferro on the right. Oddly, the four walnut pens are all quite different, despite coming from the same piece of wood and getting the same treatment… no two alike was never so true!!
Also introduced here for the first time… wire burns. This involves various thicknesses of instrument wire, held between pairs of wooden holders, pressed against the rotating piece to produce a burned-in black line detail. I think I like this best with two lines, as on the cherry pens.
Five More Pens (Sorry, I know this is boring), originally uploaded by rgdaniel.
Actually made 6 pens today, but one had a teeny tiny flaw that caused it to fail my stringent quality control. My wife seems happy to have it though.
This time we have (l-r) Paduak, Zebrawood (x2) and Pau Ferro (x2).
The Paduak and the first Zebrawood introduce the “satin nickel” finish, which I quite like. May get more of them… I only bought 10.
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…
