Another trip to Woodcraft

Yesterday I went with my friend Nelson to Woodcraft. I am going to teach him how to make his own pen today (hopefully), so we went to choose a kit and look at what is available in the store. I bought 5 Classic American click pen kits, and 5 Classic American twist pen kits, and a piece of Olivewood that I just could not resist. The Olivewood could be made into 8 pens, or a few winestoppers. It has a really cool black line running through it.

This is the first time that I will be trying to teach someone else how to do the pens. I guess we will make two of them - one for me to show him how to do it, and one for him to do himself (with probably a bit of help from me).

I used the rest of my Woodcraft gift card (from the holidays), so the out-of-pocket on this visit was only $20.

Shakey Le Tree on display

This morning, I visited Nuance, the store where Shakey Le Tree pens are now on sale. The display looks great - the pens are nicely laid out behind a glass case:



Close-up of the card at the top of the display:



Close-up of one of the pens on display:



I was really happy with the display...if they do not sell, it will not be because of a lack of effort.

I made another nice one tonight - a Cocobolo Classic American pen. I think I will be working with Cocobolo for a while...I have some great pieces that are only really good for pens (and maybe jewelry, if I can figure out how to make it), and it would be a shame not to use them. Cocobolo also always comes out unique.

I also made a mistake on a pen tonight...I was making an Olivewood Broker pen, and I got some tearout and had to start over. I lost the wood, but kept the tube, so I should be able to make another Broker pen with another piece of Olivewood.

I got back my sharpened roughing gouge on Sunday, and used it tonight for the first time. What a difference! I learned a bit about sharpening, too. The angle of the sharpening wheel changes as the tool gets sharpened multiple times, as the sharpener actually shortens the tool. So, even though I had set up the right angle for the sharpening wheel when I first set it up, I needed to change it occasionally, and I had not done that. Also, I was told that I needed to sharpen longer on the sides of the tool than I had been. I will see if I can do that successfully.

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.

One thing about Olivewood...

Though it looks really nice, and turns really well...the waxy surface means that it does not adhere very well. On my second try at an Olivewood slimline pen, I created a nice-looking pen that is completely non-functional because the brass tube inside the top of the pen came unglued (as I almost did, when I saw it). So, you can twist the top of the pen all you want, but the pen will not work.

*sigh*

Well, if all of my attempts were perfect, I would have nothing to write about.

More things to solve, and using a different polish

Well, after a week away, I finally returned to the pen blanks that I had cut and drilled before my trip. I keep forgetting how long it takes to trim the barrels of several pen blanks before getting them to the lathe. As an added wrinkle, today I had some tearout in one of the olivewood blanks when I was trimming it. I am not sure if it was because the blank itself was small (little room for error) or the barrel trimmer was dull (I probably do need to sharpen it) or the wood itself was weak. Following a tip from one of my books, I took the piece that came off, pressed it into place (a wood with grain helps with this, as you can see how the wood aligns), and applied thin CA glue to the whole area. Hopefully, the piece will stay put now, and when the glue dries, the wood will be stronger and I can finish the trimming and make the pen. I like it when I can salvage pens even when something goes wrong. The pencil I made for my wife, which came out REALLY well, was initially an instance where the tube got stuck on its way into the blank. Doubly satisfying.

My brother and his girlfriend are coming to visit tomorrow, so I finally get to show him the present I made. His girlfriend is EXTREMELY chemically sensitive, so when I was at the grocery store today, I picked up some organic citrus wood/furniture polish. I thought that I could make a slimline pen for her, and use that polish in case the other polish would cause problems.

I made the pen without too much of a problem, but one thing I did NOT realize is that the organic polish takes a VERY long time to dry. I am used to the Myland's polish, which dries very quickly. As a result, I was putting the pen together while it was still wet. I think it still came out okay, though. I just need to watch that if I polish other stuff with that same polish.



Speaking of pens and such made for specific people, I finally got to give the magnifying glass to my father-in-law last weekend. That was cool - he really appreciated it. I also gave my mother-in-law a cocobolo pen that I had made a while back, which had come out really well.

Cutting some more blanks, and what to do about Holly?

Yesterday I cut some more blanks to use with my batch of pen kits. I cut a bloodwood blank to make a Classic American pen with, to go with the letter opener that my wife is giving to her co-worker as a present. My last attempt at this ended up with tearout, so we cannot give it away as a present.

I also cut a piece of Olivewood into three blanks to be used for slimline pens. I made a Classic American pen out of Olivewood that came out very well a while back (ended up as a gift to a co-worker of mine), so I decided to make some more pens with it. The piece of Olivewood that I am using for the pens is a large piece that was on the $1 discount table at WoodCraft. I should be able to make at least 8 pens with it, so I am way ahead on the deal (pen blanks that you buy are usually $1 per blank and up), assuming that the pens come out well.

I also cut some Bocote for use as Classic American pens. I did not cut any Cocobolo yesterday, though I may do so soon. I kind of want to see what happens when I make a Classic American pen and a slimline pen out of the same wood (Bocote or Cocobolo or Olivewood or Bloodwood), just to get an idea about which woods work better with which sized pens.

I only drilled and glued the bloodwood yesterday, but Saturday I will turn the Bloodwood and maybe (if I get inspired) the purple Acrylic pen that has been drilled and glued ever since that fateful day when I first tried to make an acrylic pen. I will also drill and glue the other blanks, and maybe (depending on how long I am at it) I will get to turn some of those as well. We will be away for much of the next week, and I think I will miss the turning, so I want to get a bunch of it in before we go. My wife is singing with her choral group at a wedding on Saturday, so I should have some time if I want it.

I picked up a large piece of holly wood at Woodcraft, with the idea of perhaps using the holly as the wood for the white pieces of a chess set. I want to turn a couple of pens with it, but the wood is REALLY white with no grain lines to speak of. This may work well for the chess set, but a pen would probably look really boring. So, I need to find another use (maybe a magnifier, or maybe as accents in a composite pen?), or keep it on the shelf until I actually decide to make the chess set. I still need to decide on a dark wood for the black pieces of the chess set, too.

I have seen online that you can clean MicroMesh with a brush that has bristles on it. I think I might recycle my old grill-cleaning brush as a sandpaper-cleaning brush if it works. I'll give it a shot on Saturday.