Just as I thought to try something other than pens...

Last week I decided to spend my gift certificate and use the "$15 off of $50" coupon, so I went to Woodcraft with the idea of getting the starter kit for winestoppers. Winestoppers start as a cube of wood, and are used to close up wine bottles that have been opened but not finished. They do not use a mandrel, and are not therefore done by spindle turning, so I thought that they might provide a bridge between the world of pens and the world of more "freehand" work such as bowls.

And lamps. Not mentioned thus far in this space is the fact that we are redecorating some of the rooms of our house (slowly). While we were discussing lighting, my wife asked me if I could turn a lamp. I had never thought about doing it, but it seemed like something that would be doable. We spoke to one of the woodturning wizards (Chris, the one who taught us in the bowl class), and he said that he had turned several lamps and that it was (relatively) simple to do.

So, I picked up a couple of practice pieces to try to make into lamps. One of the main issues is how to drill the hole for the cord through the lamp when you do not have a drill press that goes all the way through. I have been reading up on ways to do this, and it is a bit daunting, but very interesting too.

So, I came back with the starter kit for the winestoppers, and some wood to use for winestopper blanks, and some wood to use for practicing the whole lamp thing...and suddenly my sister says to me that she wants me to make several Broker-style pens for members of her team at work. This would involve 10 or 11 pens, so I ordered 15 kits (ever the optimist, I assume that 3-4 of my attempts will be wrecked somehow) from Craft Supplies USA, and they should get here in a few days. After they get here, I will concentrate mainly on the pens until they are done.

THEN I might be able to start on the winestoppers and/or lamps. At which point we'll see some more pictures here, I am pretty sure.

I did finally make a good Classic American pen out of Tulipwood, so I feel a bit better.

Budgetary considerations: Woodcraft - $63.27 ($138.78 total), of which $23.27 ($78.78 total) was out of pocket.
Online ordering of kits: $116.35
Now, I will get back $10 for each pen that I attempt for my sister's team, so that will not be all out of pocket either. So, I will not count that among the Woodcraft expenses. I'll just make a note of it.

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.