My own pen blanks!

The whole process is coming together. With the band saw, I can now take large pieces of wood and create my own pen blanks. There was a bit of trial and error here, too. Strangely enough, I learned that using the miter gauge on the band saw was not the way to go. Drawing lines on the wood and using those as a guide worked MUCH better than trusting that the wood was being cut straight just because I was using a miter gauge. The miter gauge helped when I cut a large piece off of an even larger piece of wood, but did not help so much when needing precision.

I also might have solved one of my gluing issues, though it may be too early to tell. I think I was putting too much glue on the tube before inserting it into the blank. I had forgotten that the process of putting the tube into the blank involves twisting the tube in order to spread the glue around, so I did not need to put glue all over the tube before inserting it. On the set of pen blanks that I just drilled and glued, I used a lot less glue and the tubes went nicely into the blanks. Of course, the real test is to see if the tubes stay glued when I do the barrel trimming and the turning. Stay tuned...

My last two Classic American pens, made from the large piece of cocobolo wood that I bought at Woodcraft, came out really well. I think I might be getting the hang of this!



I used the picture with the flash to show the grain of the wood and the polish of the pens.

I made some Bocote pen blanks last night, and drilled and glued them for a matching pen/pencil set that I hope to turn over the next couple of days. I also set up to turn a couple of slimlines - one pen, one pencil - which I have not done since the very first pen that I turned in my own woodshop.