Word of mouth

Interesting thing happened today! We were meeting with our financial adviser, and he mentioned that he has been getting a LOT of comments (good ones :-) about the pen that I gave him a while back - a Classic American made with cocobolo. As a result, he is thinking of commissioning me to make some pens. I am not sure whether they will be going to family members, or co-workers, or someone else entirely, but it is a good day when you can

a) Get compliments about something you have made, and
b) possibly get a commission to make more!

Just thought I needed to make a note of a day like this. I do not want to take these types of events for granted.

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.

Some good, some bad...the usual.

Last night I started turning again, for the first time in a while. First, the "not so good":

I am still getting tubes stuck in the blanks when I prepare pens. Not often, but occasionally. This time it happened with a Tigre Caspi pen that I am trying to make. Getting the tube stuck in one blank of the two is okay, since some of the wood needs to be parted off anyway. However, I got it stuck in both ends...which means that I either have to use solvent to dissolve the glue and start over, or glue a piece of tube in the other end of the blank and try to salvage it. Not sure which way I will go with it.

Also, cleaning the headstock and the morse taper, while helpful, did not solve the issue. The chuck still comes off of the morse taper when I try to turn, and it is getting very annoying. I may bring the taper and the chuck to the Woodturner's Club meeting tonight. Maybe it is defective...if I do not solve it tonight, I will bring it Thursday or Saturday to Woodcraft and ask Kurt to take a look.

Now, the good:

The new Spindlemaster tool that I bought last week is fantastic. It basically acts like a skew chisel, in terms of getting close, smooth cuts, but it does not have the same risk of tearout! I am not entirely sure of the best way to sharpen it. I used my diamondstone, since it is a flat tool, but I am not sure if it should be done on the grinder instead.

I also made a good bloodwood Classic American pen, as part of pen/magnifier and pen/letter opener sets I am making. This offsets the cocobolo pen that I tried to make, where a chunk of the wood sheared off when I was using the parting tool. I had to basically lose the wood on that one, and I kept the tubes for future use.

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.

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.

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.

Shakey Le Tree goes on consignment!

Today I signed my first-ever consignment agreement, and eight of the Shakey Le Tree pens will be on sale and on display at Nuance on Central Avenue in Dover, NH. It is a great feeling, and even if none of them sell, it is pretty neat that I have reached this point.

My lovely wife contributed much of the artwork on the cards accompanying the pens, and also helped to make a "Shakey Le Tree" card that will stand next to the pens in the store.

Tomorrow, I get my roughing gouge back, freshly sharpened and ready to work on more pens.

Another milestone...

This is just a quick post, because I have to make a note of what happened today. On Monday, I received an email from someone who went into the downtown Dover store where I might soon be selling my pens. He told me that he spoke with Evelyn, and he was looking for a pen as a gift to a friend, and she gave him my contact info.

Well, this morning he showed up and bought one of the pens, a maple burl Classic American pen. It is the first pen I have ever sold to someone whom I did not know! Shakey Le Tree Designs lives and breathes, apparently.

In other news, I have severely messed up the sharpening of my roughing gouge, so I took it in to Woodcraft on the way back from Burlington on Tuesday. Don is taking it home to sharpen it, and I will get it back from him at Woodcraft on Saturday, as that is the next day that he is working there. So, no pen making until the weekend.

In the meantime, my lovely wife is helping me to create a web site for Shakey Le Tree that will just showcase the current stock and other items that I have made. It will not give the back story that I give here, about the mistakes that I make along the way. :-)

Speaking of which, I still do make mistakes - I just tend to catch them earlier. For instance, I recently attempted a pink ivory twist pen, but I did not sand it enough before polishing, and the pink ivory had lots of little pock marks (they were smooth, but visible). So, I am going to start over with that instead of making a pen from it. That way, I save the tubes and the kit, and only the wood is lost.

Income: $40

Shakey Le Tree...at a store near you?

Big news! I went to a store downtown, a store that sells very cool crafty type items, and spoke with the owner (Evelyn) about possibly selling pens there on consignment. She seemed very much into the idea, and has been thinking of having more stock around that could be aimed towards "gifts for men". She thinks that the Classic American (and maybe Wall Street) pens would fit the bill for that. She also seemed to think that the slimline and broker pens would be good for "gifts for women", which gives me a bit of a reason for making more slimline pens.

She seemed to think that my getting $35+ per pen was not unreasonable (I told her $35-40 and up, based on the price of materials used to make the pen), as it would allow her a markup of 30% and would still keep the price point where she wants it.

One thing she mentioned was that I would need boxes, so I looked up boxes on the net and found some nice metal boxes that should work. I had to order them in a block of 24, so I hope that this whole thing really works!

I am nervous and excited about the prospect of actually selling the pens...it could allow this hobby to start paying for itself in terms of materials. This could allow me to start doing wine stoppers and pepper mills and such without being that much out of pocket. And what is the worst that could happen? They do not sell, and I have that much more stock to sell elsewhere. I am researching what kind of legal agreement I should put together to sign so that both parties know what is expected of them.

In other news...yesterday I received the kit for a pen I am making for my uncle. Along with the kit, I ordered an extra set of tubes, so that I can try to turn a couple of different types of wood and see what looks best. The kit costs $40, so I want to make sure that the turning comes out great before I assemble the pen.

Last night we went to Woodcraft, and I found a neat piece of Maple Burl that I could use for ornaments or winestoppers or...pen blanks. I am going to turn a piece of the maple burl AND a piece of cocobolo for the emperor pen, and see which comes out best.

So...a bit of financial outlay this week:
$70.95 for the Emperor Pen Kit
$17 for the Maple Burl
$11 for a kit to make a pepper mill at some point
$48 for the boxes
Total: $146.95