I've learned enough to teach!

Sunday evening, I taught my friend Nelson how to make a pen. We went through all of the steps together, and he did some of the turning and sanding and polishing. We ended up with a really nice Classic American click pen that he took back to Newfoundland with him.

While at Woodcraft on Sunday, though, Nelson and I noticed something about the drill press at the store. It was the same model as the one that I bought, but the one at the store seemed to have a LOT more room vertically between the chuck and the table. It turns out (though it still needs verification) that the drill press that I have might be put together incorrectly. Normally, this would be my fault, but I actually bought the floor (i.e. demonstration) model from Woodcraft when I bought my drill press, so THEY were the ones who put it together.

I am not sure what to do about this if it is true. I am going to take pictures of my drill press, and bring the pictures down to Woodcraft. HOPEfully, they will let me trade in mine for the one they have out on the floor right now, but I am not sure if they will. I mean, I know they like me and all, but they might tell me to take mine apart and put it together correctly. I will not be happy if that happens.

One of my next pens might be one of holly...maybe a slimline. I learned a tip or two when dealing with holly - clean sandpaper, and sand away from the wood towards the bushings. All of this serves to keep the dust from other wood from getting onto the holly. We'll see what happens.

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.

Still learning...

Tonight I tried another Tulipwood click pen, and while the wood turned out very well, the pen itself did not. I think that I did not pay enough attention to the instructions which tell you to "make a press block" with a hole in it so that the top of the pen can be pressed without damaging the click mechanism. Tonight (unfortunately, after the click mechanism had already been damaged beyond repair) I built a press block. So, the next click pen should go better.

It is really a drag to get the wood sanded and polished, and figure that you are "almost home" with a new pen, only to have the assembly piece not work out. Three pens in a row have done that. Here's hoping the next one works fine.

Learning, always learning...

Well, last night was a very mixed bag. For everything that went right, I had to learn something from something that went wrong. It started with working on a Tulipwood Classic American pen. The pen itself came out pretty well, but even though I paid particular attention to getting the wood flush with the bushings, the end result was not flush with the kit on the upper barrel. I think (I will have to confirm this later) that the bushings themselves have gotten sanded down a bit, so making the wood flush with the bushings will make it slightly below where it should be for the finished product. I have no problem getting a new set of bushings if that is the case. If that is NOT the case, I have no clue what is going on.

While putting together the CA pen, I learned how (for the first time) to use the file that I bought recently. The fit between the upper and lower barrels was very tight (and it is supposed to be fairly loose). The recommended way to handle this is to file down the inside of the upper barrel. I had never done this before, but it worked pretty well when I did it for the first time.

Then I went to work on a Tulipwood click pen. This one was one that I was trying to resurrect, as the tube had gotten stuck in the blank during the gluing process. So, I cut off the tube part that was outside the blank, and glued it into the other side. This seemed to work fine, until the part where I was assembling the pen. I made the bad decision to use the "short tube" part as the part of the upper barrel that was nearest the center. When I pressed a part of the kit into this end of the tube, the short piece of tube came unglued. So, I tried to reglue the tube into the upper barrel, and then press the pen together, and the wood split. So, 1 for 2 so far, for those counting at home.

The tiebreaker would be a cocobolo slimline pen. This pen worked fine all the way to the last part of putting the pen together. At that point (as had happened with an olivewood slimline pen a while back), the glue holding the upper tube inside the upper barrel came loose, and the tube came out. I decided to use the thin fast-acting glue to put the tube back into the barrel, and the tube got stuck halfway in. So, I have a ridiculous-looking approximation of a slimline pen.

1 for 3 on the night, and even the 1 had issues. Hopefully I will be able to come up with some quality work soon.

Working with Tulipwood

Tonight (and last night) I have been gluing and trimming the pens that I have going, i.e. 2 tulipwood click pens, 2 tulipwood CA pens, and one cocobolo slimline pen. Tulipwood seems to be a very hard wood - the barrel trimmer has a tough time with it. At the same time, it seems to act like cocobolo when I try to glue a tube into it, i.e. getting the tube stuck. One of the tubes got stuck, and I used the band saw to cut the tube and re-glue it into the other end, but I am not convinced that it will come out correctly, since I think it will make the resulting blank too long. Maybe, if I am careful, I can salvage it.

I still have not turned the tulipwood on the lathe, but it looks like it COULD come out very nicely. I will probably make one or more of the pens this weekend.

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. :-)

Three successes!

Last night I made my first fountain pen! Made from padauk, it came out really well (I am using the picture of the open pen as the background to my title at the top of the blog):


I also made an Olivewood click pencil. This one looks a lot like the Olivewood click pen that I made a while back, but unlike that one, this one actually works. Some nice grain in this one, even though my photography does not do it justice:

Here is the Classic American click pen that I made over the weekend. It looks a lot like the other Classic American pens (the ones that twist), but on this one you press the top to get the point of the pen out:


The interesting thing about that one is that I used the new reddish piece of cocobolo for it, and yet it came out brown (with interesting grain, but still...). Just goes to show that you can never really tell what the inside of a piece of wood is going to be like, in terms of colour. You can tell what the grain will be like, but that is it.

Catching up on the week

I was in Toronto last Tuesday and Wednesday, and not feeling well on Thursday, so I did not really get to do anything related to pen turning until the weekend.

Friday I sharpened the barrel trimmer on the diamond stone, and that worked pretty well. No more tearout (so far) from the barrel trimming.

Saturday, I went to a demo on dust collection at the Woodcraft store. Most of the discussion revolved around how to do dust collection efficiently in woodshops that are considerably larger than mine, but it was interesting nonetheless. I DID learn that what I am doing in my shop (wearing a respirator, using the shopvac to clean up) is basically what I should be doing, based on the machines I am using and the layout of the shop. That was a relief - I want to stay safe (no wood dust in the lungs and such), but I did not want to shell out for a dust collection system at this point.

After the demo, I hung around the store for a bit, and bought some reddish Cocobolo wood. I found out that you can get smaller pieces of the various wood types, instead of having to buy the entire piece that the store has along the wall. As long as you leave them at least 4 feet of wood, you can take a smaller piece. This is great - it will enable me to try different woods for my pens without making major purchases.

On the way out, I got into a discussion (not the first time) about purpleheart with the people on the staff. They seem to think that once purpleheart turns brown, it cannot turn back to purple. This is contrary to my own experience, so basically I am convinced that no one knows what to do to make sure that the finished product comes out purple.

I worked on a few different pens yesterday and today:
1. A cocobolo Classic American click pen - I cut and drilled and glued this one yesterday, and made it this morning. It looks like the other Classic American style pens, but drilling and turning it is a lot different because the tubes for the two halves of the blanks are actually different sizes. Instead of twisting, the pen clicks. It came out pretty well, and my wife says that she may prefer this style to the Classic American twist pen.
2. A padauk Classic American fountain pen - I cut and drilled and glued this one yesterday, and trimmed the barrel today. I will probably make the pen tomorrow night when my wife is at her choral group practice. This was made from a blank that my wife said looks almost like a sunset (padauk is basically orange).
3. An olivewood click pencil - the counterpart to the olivewood click pen that I made (the one that looked fine but was inoperable because I messed with it). This one had already been drilled and glued. I just trimmed the barrel, and I may work on making that one tomorrow night too.
4. A cocobolo click pen - This one I cut and drilled, but I am not going to glue it yet. I was advised by my guru at Woodcraft to drill cocbolo twice if the tube is a tight fit the first time. Let the wood dry out and shrink, and then drill it again. So, I will drill it again tomorrow night, and then glue it to work on later.

My brother told me that his co-workers really like the pens, and that they may want some for themselves. Not holding my breath, but that would be pretty cool. I gave him the two online sites that I use for kits, and figure that they can pick one out if they want, as long as they understand that the price goes up a bit if it is not a kit that I have already or can get in bulk.

Two more pen kits, please...

So today I went to Woodcraft (big surprise there) and got the bushings and a kit for the Classic American Fountain Pen. I also got another kit for the regular click pen, so I can try it out with cocobolo or bloodwood.

I also asked how to sharpen the pen mill (barrel trimmer). It seems that I can do that on the diamond stone sharpener that I bought for the skew chisel, so I am going to give that a try.

A visit to the office, two visits to Woodcraft, some success, some failure

Last night I went to Woodcraft and bought the bushings and a kit for a Classic American "click" pen, which is different from the twist pens that I have been making. Unfortunately, I did not realize that the "click" pen requires a different drill bit as well (11 mm), and I had to go back tonight on my way home to get that. I also applied for a Woodcraft Visa card (about time - I should have done that ages ago!) and picked up the kits and bushings for a regular ball-point click pen - not Classic American style.

Last night, after getting home, I made a Bocote Classic American pen that came out pretty well. It is the same wood that I used for my brother's pen and pencil set.

Today, I went to my company's office in Burlington and brought my pens with me (as I always do). I ended up giving away a pen that I thought no one would want - a pen/pencil combo that was made from two woods (Redheart on top and Cocobolo on the bottom). I always kind of liked that one, but I never thought that anyone else would. One of my co-workers really liked it, so I gave it to him. He wanted to pay me, but I stuck to my "free to friends, sold to friends who want to give it as a gift to someone else" policy. He wanted to use it himself, so it was free.

Tonight I tried to make two pens. I used Olivewood to try to make the regular click ballpoint pen, and it did not come out quite right, so I tried to fix it and ended up breaking the mechanism. So, it looks good but does not operate. The look of it is such that I may make more in that style, though, and I can show it to people as a prototype as long as they do not try to write with it:



The second pen was an acrylic that was the most expensive pen (in terms of materials) that I have made so far. The kit was platinum instead of gold (my wife picked out the acrylic and the kit to go together), and went nicely with the black, white, and red of the acrylic. The sanding was not a perfect job. It falls just short of my last attempt with acrylics in terms of the look and feel of it. I could probably sell it, but we'll have to see:



The first "team-designed" pen was glued together tonight as well. My wife designed a pen that is part cocobolo and part ash. We cut the pieces and glued them together, and tomorrow we will (hopefully) cut and drill the resulting blanks, and then glue the tubes. If THAT goes well, we will later make the pen. The first combo experiment! I am excited, but a bit nervous about the process, as it is the first time.

My first commission, and a design partner

Today, at our July 4th gathering, I received my first commission for a particular type of pen. A friend of our family, seeing the different types of pens that I can create, requested a click-pen made out of cocobolo. I have not yet done any pens made from kits for click pens (as opposed to the slimline and CA pens, which twist to open and close), so I will have to look when I next go to Woodcraft to see what kits they may have. My wife may pick out the acrylic blank for her requested pen, as well. I will also be on the lookout for the blue wood or acrylic, as stated earlier. I am still feeling patriotic, and I still think that a red, white, and blue segmented pen could be fun.

On the way back home tonight, my wife commented that it might be fun to design some pens together, which I think is a very cool idea. I have many different types of pens to attempt, and I think it would be great to have her come up with some design ideas for combination (more than one type of wood/acrylic/colour) pens of various styles. That way, the finished product could be the result of teamwork.

With the latest success with acrylic, and the way it was received, I may attempt to do more with them. We will have to see.