Pens

After my father passed away his wood lathe came to live at my house.  A couple of years ago I took a pen-making seminar and really enjoyed it.  I was a little reluctant to make more on my own because, like all hobbies, it needs new equipment and a financial outlay.  Even though I have the lathe I would still need to buy a mandrel, bushings, finishing products, etc. on top of the actual materials for each pen.  The cheap b@stard in me was reluctant to do so.  It's like buying pins and tape measures and seam rippers and scissors and everything else just to make a set of napkins.  You are reluctant to make that initial investment.  Just before this past Christmas I started talking about biting the bullet and getting into it anyway.  Life is too short.  I went ahead and ordered a starter kit and J took that as a signal to stock up on blanks for me as a wonderful Christmas gift.  And for the last week I have been having so much fun playing out in the garage.

I made the first pen in the pic above at the seminar way back when.  It is made from padauk (#88K7528), an interesting wood because it started off as orange - I had orange sawdust everywhere - but dulls to a deep brown with oxidation.  

The second pen is the first one I made this week at home.  It was tough to remember what I learned in that seminar so long ago, but fortunately google is my friend.  This one is called a rust and black acetate (#88K7895) but to me it looks like browns and golds.  It is really pretty in person.  I love the depth of colour in the acrylic blanks.  I used the 9 step Micro-Mesh sanding pads to wet sand and then finished with the Mother's car wax that was in my garage.  This process gave it a finish like glass.  I will gift this one to my mother as a late Mother's Day gift (I had initially intended to get to this project before Mother's Day but that didn't happen).  It just feels appropriate that she get the first project I make from dad's lathe.  Besides, it is the nicest one of the bunch and she deserves that.

The third pen is for J, so I chose an acrylic in Skidoo colours (88K7893).  It's not one of the blanks he bought me so he won't be expecting it (no I haven't given it to him yet).  I used the same process as above.

The fourth pen is made from a red dyed maple burl (88K7914).  The website says "these resin-impregnated blanks combine the beauty and bold figuring of maple burl with the stability and consistent texture of plastic."  This one gave me a lot of grief finishing it.  I couldn't remember the specifics of finishing wood from when I made the padauk one because it was so long ago.  I just remembered that we used a CA glue (like Crazy Glue).  All the youtube videos I watched had you just sand to 600 (as opposed to the 12000 that you do the acrylic blanks) and then apply 3 coats of glue, sanding and polishing when you are done.  I couldn't get a decent finish to save my life.  I redid it several times and now had a buildup of glue that was leaving lots of white rough bits.  I was about to say "good enough" and even took the parts off the lathe when I decided to treat it like an acrylic.  I know you aren't supposed to wet sand wood because it will raise the grain but I thought the wood should be sealed under the glue by now, right?  I had been using a 600 grit to sand so I went back to a 320 to remove a lot of the excess glue.  All the videos talk about a light sanding but I went a bit heavy.  Then I went over it again with the 600 grit.  I actually had a not bad finish at this point, definitely better than it had been.  Then I used the full Micro Mesh set to wet sand and then polished with car wax.  My results were very much improved over what I initially had.  There are still a few white spots visible but the finish is nice and smooth, even glass-like.  I am so glad that I redid it one more time because otherwise I would have been disapointed every time I looked at it.  The smooth finish feels nice in the hand.  I will be keeping this pen for myself and I am hoping that one day I will have improved enough that I will look at it as a good reminder of how far I have come.