Sharpening changes, and a trip to the office

Today I went in to my office in Burlington, MA. One of the (many) things I did while I was there was to show my new pens to the co-workers who visited the office where I was sitting. I also gave my old boss the pen that I made for him (as thanks for the tip he gave me about the plumbing issue I was having), and gave my office-mate the cocobolo slimline pencil that I made.

On the way home from work, I stopped in at Woodcraft (big surprise there). I brought the skew jig that I had recently bought from there, and the skew chisel that I tried to sharpen it with (with VERY limited success). I intended to ask one of the people there to show me how to correctly use the skew jig with the sharpening system so that I could correctly sharpen the skew chisel at home. The person I asked to do this was Chris, the 18-year-old who taught the bowl-turning class that my wife and I took last month. He sharpened the chisel for me, taking a lot of his time to do it (for which I was very grateful), but instead of my trying to sharpen it myself using the skew jig, I traded in the skew jig for a diamond stone. A diamond stone allows for hand sharpening of the skew chisel, and also allows for more of a margin of error. Chris showed me how to use it, and also told me that he and his father ALWAYS use the diamond stone to sharpen the skew chisels because of the difficulty of doing it on the sharpening system.

I also got to show the folks at Woodcraft the PenPal 1000, a creation of my wife's that allows me to carry my pens (and magnifiers and such) around with me in style:



When closed, it looks like this:

When wrapped up as a carrying case, it is very easy to bring around with me:


It's an excellent present, and I am very grateful for it. Now that I have a sharp skew chisel, I can start making new things for it. I think the next thing will be the bloodwood pen to match the letter opener, but I have some ideas for projects after that one.