Red Letter Day!

After a phenomenal trip through Canada (Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, Jasper, and back to Toronto and Ottawa and home), I have been trying to get back into the routine of things. Our summer of events is by no means over, but for a bit the weeks will assume something close to normalcy.

Today I received an email from Evelyn, whose store (Nuance) has my pens for sale. For the first time since she started stocking them, she sold one! I have actually sold a pen in a retail environment! It was a Double Twist Bloodwood pen, with a chrome kit. I will actually get a check for my pen at the end of this month!

I have been talking with Evelyn about perhaps putting together matching pen and letter opener kits. Inspired by today's events, I turned two letter openers and a pen tonight. I already had a bloodwood pen made, so I now have matching sets of bloodwood and Tigre Caspi wood to show to Evelyn, once we make cards for them.

I also have a piece of cocobolo that could become a magnifying glass. That will be good to show to Evelyn too, in case she wants that instead of the opener. To be truthful, the letter opener kits do not strike me as being great, but when matched with a pen they look pretty cool.

There was another cool thing tonight...I mentioned last post that there was a pen that had tubes sticking out of both halves. Well, by gluing in an extra piece of tube, and cutting the blank a certain way, I was able to save the pen. It is the Tigre Caspi pen in the set I spoke of earlier.

Some good, some bad...the usual.

Last night I started turning again, for the first time in a while. First, the "not so good":

I am still getting tubes stuck in the blanks when I prepare pens. Not often, but occasionally. This time it happened with a Tigre Caspi pen that I am trying to make. Getting the tube stuck in one blank of the two is okay, since some of the wood needs to be parted off anyway. However, I got it stuck in both ends...which means that I either have to use solvent to dissolve the glue and start over, or glue a piece of tube in the other end of the blank and try to salvage it. Not sure which way I will go with it.

Also, cleaning the headstock and the morse taper, while helpful, did not solve the issue. The chuck still comes off of the morse taper when I try to turn, and it is getting very annoying. I may bring the taper and the chuck to the Woodturner's Club meeting tonight. Maybe it is defective...if I do not solve it tonight, I will bring it Thursday or Saturday to Woodcraft and ask Kurt to take a look.

Now, the good:

The new Spindlemaster tool that I bought last week is fantastic. It basically acts like a skew chisel, in terms of getting close, smooth cuts, but it does not have the same risk of tearout! I am not entirely sure of the best way to sharpen it. I used my diamondstone, since it is a flat tool, but I am not sure if it should be done on the grinder instead.

I also made a good bloodwood Classic American pen, as part of pen/magnifier and pen/letter opener sets I am making. This offsets the cocobolo pen that I tried to make, where a chunk of the wood sheared off when I was using the parting tool. I had to basically lose the wood on that one, and I kept the tubes for future use.

Broker Pens, Purpleheart, Cocobolo and other stories

I feel like Rudyard Kipling, with a post title like that, but I cannot write like him, so I will stick to my own style :-)

The broker pens are done! The holly one will probably not be part of the set, but I have ten others that are completed. I learned a lot during the process. In particular, the sanding technique that I learned from the web site I mentioned in an earlier post has worked out REALLY well. I have also learned, through trial and error, how to better use the skew chisel so that I do not get tearout. For posterity, the full cast of characters:



Final tally: 3 cocobolo (1 very striking, 2 pretty cool), 2 Lignum Vitae (1 with the new sanding technique), and one each of: Bloodwood, Osage Orange (mistakenly called Orangeheart in an earlier post), Bubinga, Pink Ivory, and Bocote.

This morning there was an 'event' at Woodcraft, and there was 10% off of everything in the store (20% off of wood!). So, we went down there (we had also gotten a coupon for a free bag of odds and ends from the store) and, well, spent money again. Most of the money was spent on wood (a BEAUTIFUL piece of Cocobolo, two nice pieces of Bloodwood, and a large piece of Honey Mesquite - something that looks like Mahogany and has a cool grain to it.). Some of the money was spent on a chuck for the lathe. It turns out that the wine stopper starter kit does not include a chuck and a Morse Taper (I'll explain what that is as soon as I have used it successfully), but both are needed for working on the wine stoppers (and can be used for other projects like pepper mills and such).

All told, I spent $92.50 on materials which would normally cost $111.63:

Totals:
Out of pocket $242.47, Total: $341.56

All is not lost, though, as I really think that my pen-making skills are improving. I finally made the Olivewood Slimline pen that I cut and drilled ages ago, and it came out pretty well:



I also finally turned the wood from the Purpleheart Click pen that I cut and drilled a while back. Like other efforts with purpleheart, however, the wood is kind of gray-brown after being turned. This time, instead of going forward with the pen, I am going to let the turned pieces sit for a while and see if oxidation helps to restore the purple colour. If not, I am going to return all of my purpleheart blanks, including a large piece that I was hoping to use for a lamp at some point. It just does not seem worth the effort to turn purpleheart, unless I figure something out that is currently eluding me.

After coming back from Woodcraft and turning the Olivewood pen, I cut and drilled four blanks for click pens from the cocobolo that I bought this morning. I have quite a bit of cocobolo already, but this piece is especially cool, both in its reddish colour and its grain. Two people came up to me in the store and said that they had each seen someone different almost buy the piece that I was buying, and one person said that they were thinking of buying it themselves. When you see a piece like this, you just have to get it.

One of the blanks did not make it past the drilling stage, but I drilled and glued the other three, and this afternoon I turned and sanded and polished it, and I think it is one of my best ever:



I could not decide which picture did it justice (neither one does, really), so I included both. It took a lot of effort to line up the grain, since the bottom of the click pen screws into the top half. With a Classic American pen, you can just line up the grain and push the two halves together, but with a click pen you have to screw it in just right if you are making a pen where there is visible grain. A cool part of this too was that the black parts of the pen were not visible until I had turned it. The outside of the wood looked completely different!

As a last picture, here are two Cocobolo bullet-tip pens. One of them I have had for a while, but the other one I finally finished gluing together recently:



The red hue of the Cocobolo is set off nicely by the silver of the bullet-tip kit.

Broker Pen Progress

Much has happened since the last post - I have not really been keeping up. Unrelated to pens, I have golfed for the first time and blown the shofar at Rosh Hashanah services (not for the first time, but every time is different). I was struck, as I am every year, at how much the Jewish services revolve around the idea of peace. If only all religions did that (I know that Jews are not the ONLY ones, by any means), can you just imagine what the world could be like?

The broker pen commission has continued, with mixed but mostly positive results. I finally made one from the beautiful piece of cocobolo that I was working from (unsuccessfully up until now). I also made one from holly, which came out fine but was a bit disappointing as to colour (kind of a dull white, and it had a knot which does not really add). My latest attempt was with pink ivory, trying to recapture the magic shade of deep pink that my Classic American pen achieved. Alas, this piece of pink ivory came out well but was not as bright.

I showed the group of existing broker pens to my sister, who liked them all except for the holly and the lignum vitae. I was not too surprised about the holly, but I thought that she would have liked the lignum vitae. So, the list of "commissioned" pens is as follows: Orangeheart, Pink Ivory, Cocobolo, Bocote, Bubinga (one that I made a while back). I am looking to make a bloodwood one and then make a couple more of cocobolo. I *may* try one of purpleheart or padauk. Somehow I need to come up with 10 pens that are different from one another.

Next up: What's going on with the budget? We KNOW there have been other visits to Woodcraft...

Hughie, Dewey, and Gluey

Well, the first two broker pens are done, and they came out really well! I turned an orangeheart pen first, to see what it would look like, and it looks pretty cool.


Then I turned a lignum vitae pen, and that came out well too.
All this after turning a pink ivory CA pen that is one of the best I have done in a long time.

I was on a roll!

Then...I started trying to turn the other broker pens. Four in a row have either had the wood split or had the glue come undone between the tube and the blank. I would turn the blanks down, and start to sand them, and would feel that the tube was turning without the wood spinning with it. In a couple of cases, I got to the point where I was about to put the pen together, and the tube would slide a bit.

Luckily, I have noticed, in all cases, BEFORE using the pen kits. The pen kits are the most expensive parts of the process, and it is important to not waste one if it is avoidable. In all of the cases mentioned above, I just cut the wood off of the tube, and sanded most of the glue off of the tube so that it could be re-glued into another blank.

Tonight, I added some glue to the glued-in blanks that I already had made, and I also cut and drilled and glued a few more (one bloodwood, one holly, and three cocobolo that could come out really sharp). THIS time, I used a lot more glue. I am used to having to be very careful about using too much glue because the tube would get stuck in the blanks. This does not seem to be an issue with the broker pens. The tubes are just a bit smaller in relation to the holes that get drilled.

Side note: I canNOT see the appeal in sniffing glue. My eyes get very irritated just having the glue open and nearby for more than a minute or two, even when the garage door is open.

Sometimes, even with the best intentions...

Well, today was the day. We were away for a week, and I wanted to try to turn the combo broker pen that I have been preparing. Last night, I poured glue on all of the pen so that the wood would have more strength (a tip I got from one of my woodturning books), and today I trimmed the ends of the blank (no problem) and turned and sanded. One thing I noticed while sanding was that the surface, while smooth, was not turning smoothly on the lathe. I could not figure out why, and only when I sanded and polished the blank, and pressed the tip into the tube (unfortunately, once you have pressed one part of the pen together, you have reached the point of no return in terms of reusing the kit), did I notice that the holly wood had come apart from the rest of the pen. So...I pretty much had to give it up. It was an interesting idea, and one that I may come back to at some point, but the first try was a failure.

Another visit to the office, another pen sold...

I went to my company's office yesterday (as I do every 2-3 weeks), and my one paying customer came through again! I have given away quite a few pens to co-workers, but I have also sold several pens to this one woman who buys them as presents for her family members (mainly). Yesterday, she bought the cocobolo click pen (which came out nicely - I will have to make more of those) and the olivewood click pencil, both as presents for her daughter. If nothing else, she helps me to figure out which styles of pens might be popular.

This afternoon, I also started work on another combination pen. I decided to try a pen with two different woods stacked vertically in the pen blank, rather than horizontally (the way the padauk and purpleheart were glued together). I have no idea if it will work, but I am trying a combination of bloodwood and holly (red and white) in a striped formation. I have cut the pieces, and I have glued them together, and they are currently clamped together while the glue sets. If it works, I should be able to drill the hole in the blank this evening. The final pen, if it comes out, will either celebrate Canada Day or the barber shop. :-)

The combo pen finished

The first truly SLT designed pen has made it through to fruition! It is not easy to capture in a photograph, but you can see where the purpleheart is joined to the padauk at each end:

Now that we have finally finished one of these types of pens, it will be easier to design others. There is a noticeable thinning of the pen in the lower half - this happened, I think, because the padauk is a softer wood than the purpleheart, so the chisel cut deeper into the padauk. As I work more with different woods on the same pen, I will get used to this and the pens should turn out better.

I also made a bloodwood pen last night, to go with the letter opener. That one came out fine:

One issue that I have been running into lately is that the top of the pen is not as flush with the kit (at the middle, where the center band is). I think that this is because I part off the 1/8 inch of wood before sanding down to the bushing. Then, when I do the sanding, I am not as accurate in terms of leaving the wood level with the bushing. I think, next time, I will do the rough sanding before I part off the wood, and see if this makes a difference.

Sharp tools make all the difference

Tonight, before turning the cocobolo ballpoint twist pen (which came out very well), I sharpened the roughing gouge on the wheel and then sharpened my skew chisel on the diamond stone for the first time. What a difference! Using the skew chisel on the cocobolo was amazing. It cut so easily and so smoothly...I think it is more than ever my favourite tool.

Here is the pen I made tonight:



Another first-time experience: I had heard that when you drill out a pen blank, you should put a block of wood under the blank so that the blank does not split as the drill bit comes out the bottom. I had never run into this issue, so I did not think much of it...until tonight. I was drilling out the bloodwood blank that I had cut earlier in the evening, and the blank split because I drilled it too fast and there was no piece of wood under the blank.

Of course, now that I have a band saw, it was a matter of about 5 minutes before I had another bloodwood blank to drill. This one I drilled much more slowly, and it worked a lot better. I still (full disclosure) did not put a piece of wood under the blank, but I think that the slow drilling helped a lot. If there is a need to drill quickly, I should put the block of wood under the blank, I guess.

I decided to try the bullet tip pen again. I have tried two of them, and they both came out well in their own way. Hopefully the third one will come out VERY well. I will be using cocobolo for it.

Another shot at the designed pens

In addition to cutting a pen blank out of bloodwood, for a Classic American pen that will complement the letter opener that I made a while back, I am making another attempt at a pen that my wife designed. This will be a Classic American pen too, but it will have purpleheart at the top and bottom and padauk in the middle. If all goes well (the last such attempt did not make it past the drilling stage), it will be a neat orange and purple pen. Well, orange and brown until we find out exactly how purpleheart actually turns purple again.

[Edited later at 8:33 p.m.]
Well, the padauk/purpleheart pen passed the next stage. The glue held, and I was able to drill through the components of the blanks without any splits or tearout. I also drilled and glued the tubes, so the next step is to see if I can trim the barrels and turn the pen.

The tears that come from tearout...and some sharpening tips

Though I had heard quite a bit about the dangers of tearout when using a skew chisel (tearout happens when you do not get a clean cut when turning, and a chunk of the wood comes out instead of shavings), I had not personally experienced it in a way that was detrimental to my craft...until today. I made a Bullet Tip Pen (which, aside from the tearout, actually came out quite well) and a Classic American Pencil (ditto) out of bloodwood. In both cases, the item was nice and smooth and had a great finish...except for small tears in the wood that were too deep to sand out. So, I have a pen and pencil that I can use, but cannot really give away or sell.

My next step is to sharpen my tools again. In order to do this, I need to set up the other side of the jig that is on my sharpening system. The sharpening system has two wheels - one rough, one fine. The rough one is for setting the edge on a tool, but it removes a lot of steel if you use it all the time for sharpening (which I have, up to now). The fine one is to keep tools sharp. I need to set up the jig on the fine side, so that I can sharpen the skew chisel and the roughing gouge, and avoid tearout in the future.

I also need to buy another Classic American kit (or 10), as I promised my wife that I would make her friend a letter opener (already made) with a matching CA style pen or pencil. The pencil today would have been perfect...except for the tearout. I will try to get a good picture of the tearout, but it may be tough to get on camera. Unfortunately, that does not mean that the tearout cannot be noticed with the naked eye.

Luckily, I have a lot more bloodwood to work with, once my tools are sharp again.

A small tip about drilling

Today I cut some bloodwood on the band saw, and I will try to make a magnifying glass, a letter opener, a Classic American pencil and a Bullet Tip Americana pen out of the blanks. I still ran into a bit of trouble with the magnifier and letter opener blanks. The tubes got stuck a bit. However, this is less of a problem than it would be with a pen blank, as I can shave off the ends of the tube and just end up with a shorter handle on the magnifier or opener. I might not even have to do that - if the kits call for parting off some of the wood, I can just make it so that the part that is already out of the blank is the part that has been parted off. We'll have to see.

I did figure out that, with bloodwood at least, drilling quickly is the answer to some of the drilling issues. When I drilled through the blank quickly, the tubes fit more easily into the holes. We'll have to see if that holds with other woods as well. If that could be the answer to the cocobolo drilling nightmare, I would be very happy.

Of course, even with drilling quickly, I got a tube stuck in one of the blanks, as stated earlier (one of them I drilled slowly, so that does not count), so there may be a bit more of a learning curve.

Another tip I learned a little while ago, that I made use of again today: Thin latex gloves help with the gluing process. I do not get glue all over my hands any more.

Hopefully soon there will be pictures of bloodwood crafts to post. I am a bit scared of the bullet tip pen. The turning process includes parting a tenon in one of the halves of the pen, and also the top part of the pen does not get evenly turned. The very top of the pen is thinner than the part near the middle, so there is a gradual thickening. I messed this up the first time I put one of these together.

Yesterday I bought 10 slimline kits, like the one that I made with cocobolo. If you buy them in packs of 10 you get a discount. So, I may be making a lot more slimlines. Not a big deal now that I can cut the blanks myself, so I do not lose as much wood in the turning process.