As I deposited the check from my latest sale yesterday, I was in a dangerous mood going into Woodcraft tonight. I knew that I did not need any wood (did not keep me from looking, though), and I thought I would buy some more opener and magnifier kits. The irony of the evening was evident in the fact that I did not want to pay more for the kits (they seem to have gone up about $2 each!), and so I ended up in a conversation with one of the many friendly salesfolk about buying a chuck for the lathe. The chuck would be my first step away from just doing spindle/mandrel work (like pens, ornaments, and such) towards things like pepper mills and (eventually) bowls. The pepper mill was my stated reason for wanting the chuck, as my wife has been wanting a pepper mill and I said a while back that I would make one for her. I think, though, once I start working with the chuck, I may find all kinds of projects for it.
The salesman (he is more of a woodturner that happens to work at the store - calling him a salesman does not do him justice, though he is quite good at selling) helped me to put together the chuck, too, which means that I would not be sitting at home thinking that I was putting it together incorrectly to start with. Why is this relevant?
Well, one of the reasons I went to Woodcraft tonight was to exchange my adjustable mandrel. It got stuck easily, and I could not get it to adjust at all. It turns out that they ship the adjustable mandrel with a small (but important!) part placed on the mandrel BACKWARDS. There is no documentation accompanying the mandrel, so unless you KNOW that it is backwards, you adjust and tighten the mandrel in such a way that it never becomes unstuck. Yet another time when I was thinking that I must have been doing some beginner idiot thing, when all along it was an easy mistake to make. Luckily, I was able to exchange it out for a new one, and Chris (the salesman) showed me how to put it together correctly.
Why they put it together backwards in the box, without any docs, just baffles me.
Chris also showed me how to keep from having pieces of wood fly off when using the parting tool (which is what happened with the dyed orange pen I tried to make recently). He suggested using the point of the skew to dig into the point where the parting would take place, as a guide for the parting tool and to keep the parting from tearing along the grain when you do not want it to. I also found out tonight that I have been sharpening my parting tool a bit incorrectly, but it can be corrected with diligence.
Started three pens and a magnifier and a letter opener last night. Tigre Caspi for one of the pens, and the magnifier and opener. Pink ivory on chrome for one pen, and a reddish cocobolo on chrome for the last one.
Showing posts with label letter opener. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letter opener. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Not much to show, so much to tell!
Where to begin? There is so much going on. I guess I will just reflect in the order that things occur to me:
1. I now have the domain shakeyletree.com registered! When several of my email addresses stopped working due to the interruption of swordmoon.com, I decided to take the plunge and register shakeyletree.com as a site to host my emails and pictures of my finished products from the lathe (and maybe some links too). If you would like to send me an email related to woodturning, you can send it to woodturner at shakeyletree dot com.
2. Partly because I have not been getting email for a while, and partly because I just think it is a cool store, I stopped in to Nuance today, to find out that the pen-and-letter-opener set that I made out of Tigre Caspi sold ten days ago! This is now my second sale through the store...and was such a wonderful, unexpected surprise!
3. Work on the lathe has been uneven - I was recently working on a dyed (orange) Classic American pen that I think could have come out pretty well, but a chunk of it sheared off just before the sanding step. I also noticed that the dyed woods smell a bit like acrylic, which means that I should probably wait for a cool day when I can open the garage door before I work on them again. However, I did make a beautiful magnifier using cocobolo:
Not only did the grain and colour of the wood come out really nicely (due to the wood, really, not to anything I did), but I tried something new. It is kind of hard to tell in these pictures, but I added lines near each end of the wood, as a bit of decoration. They came out even better than I had hoped.
Here is another picture, just concentrating on the stem:
Again, kind of hard to tell, but you can see them a bit. I actually made the lines using a beading tool...I have not yet made any beads with the tool, but as I was playing around with it, I found that it made nice parallel lines in the wood, much like I have heard that wire burning would do.
After it cools off, weatherwise, I hope to work more on pens and such and maybe get a chuck to make some stoppers or a pepper mill or something.
1. I now have the domain shakeyletree.com registered! When several of my email addresses stopped working due to the interruption of swordmoon.com, I decided to take the plunge and register shakeyletree.com as a site to host my emails and pictures of my finished products from the lathe (and maybe some links too). If you would like to send me an email related to woodturning, you can send it to woodturner at shakeyletree dot com.
2. Partly because I have not been getting email for a while, and partly because I just think it is a cool store, I stopped in to Nuance today, to find out that the pen-and-letter-opener set that I made out of Tigre Caspi sold ten days ago! This is now my second sale through the store...and was such a wonderful, unexpected surprise!
3. Work on the lathe has been uneven - I was recently working on a dyed (orange) Classic American pen that I think could have come out pretty well, but a chunk of it sheared off just before the sanding step. I also noticed that the dyed woods smell a bit like acrylic, which means that I should probably wait for a cool day when I can open the garage door before I work on them again. However, I did make a beautiful magnifier using cocobolo:
Not only did the grain and colour of the wood come out really nicely (due to the wood, really, not to anything I did), but I tried something new. It is kind of hard to tell in these pictures, but I added lines near each end of the wood, as a bit of decoration. They came out even better than I had hoped.
Here is another picture, just concentrating on the stem:
Again, kind of hard to tell, but you can see them a bit. I actually made the lines using a beading tool...I have not yet made any beads with the tool, but as I was playing around with it, I found that it made nice parallel lines in the wood, much like I have heard that wire burning would do.
After it cools off, weatherwise, I hope to work more on pens and such and maybe get a chuck to make some stoppers or a pepper mill or something.
Monday, May 19, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Wow...no posts for March?!?
You'd think that I did no woodturning for the entire month...while it was not a HEAVY month for woodturning, I did verify that the drill press was now working much better, and I set up my sharpening system and jigs the way that I wanted them (finally). The sharpening system had not really been set up correctly before. The grinder was not bolted down, so it sometimes would move while I was sharpening the tools, which is bad. Also, the spacing between the grinder and the jigs on either side was not optimal either, so I really could only use one side of the grinder at a time.
New wood: I picked up some great cocobolo (not that I needed more, but they got a new shipment at Woodcraft and it was too good to pass up). I also picked up some cheap bird's-eye maple and some burl that looked cool. Yesterday Woodcraft had a 15% off sale, and I took advantage of it. I got some new kits (magnifying glass, letter opener, key ring) and even got a new Spindlemaster tool and a couple of neat books.
A couple of weeks ago I stopped in to Nuance to talk to the owner there. I mentioned possibly doing letter openers and magnifying glasses and such, and she seemed very interested. So, I may do a couple of Classic American sets - either pen and magnifier or pen and letter opener. One set in bloodwood or maple, and one set in cocobolo.
I also got some dyed blanks yesterday. They seem to come out pretty well. I think I am set for wood for a good long while now (yeah, right).
Something I also learned yesterday, that gave me hope for doing wine stoppers and such: The reason why the chuck may be slipping out of the headstock is that the headstock may be dirty. If I clean out the headstock, and clean the taper on the chuck, then it may fit together correctly. It is worth a shot, and gives me hope, as I said. Maybe I can start doing eggs and winestoppers soon.
New wood: I picked up some great cocobolo (not that I needed more, but they got a new shipment at Woodcraft and it was too good to pass up). I also picked up some cheap bird's-eye maple and some burl that looked cool. Yesterday Woodcraft had a 15% off sale, and I took advantage of it. I got some new kits (magnifying glass, letter opener, key ring) and even got a new Spindlemaster tool and a couple of neat books.
A couple of weeks ago I stopped in to Nuance to talk to the owner there. I mentioned possibly doing letter openers and magnifying glasses and such, and she seemed very interested. So, I may do a couple of Classic American sets - either pen and magnifier or pen and letter opener. One set in bloodwood or maple, and one set in cocobolo.
I also got some dyed blanks yesterday. They seem to come out pretty well. I think I am set for wood for a good long while now (yeah, right).
Something I also learned yesterday, that gave me hope for doing wine stoppers and such: The reason why the chuck may be slipping out of the headstock is that the headstock may be dirty. If I clean out the headstock, and clean the taper on the chuck, then it may fit together correctly. It is worth a shot, and gives me hope, as I said. Maybe I can start doing eggs and winestoppers soon.
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