A Peek at the Possibilities

Since I started working on the teacher's pen project, I have been thinking more about what else I can do to create more intricate designs for my pens. I also attended a local bowl turners group meeting earlier this week where one of the guys talked about how he makes his segmented bowls. That seemed to kick the old imagination into high gear.

Taking my first step into segementation with smaller pieces, I cut up some maple that I had already planed down to 1/8". I laminated these little pieces with an accent color and turned a sample.

This is what I've got:

This shows me that conceptually I'm on track. Now I need to work on putting together a full sized blank so I can complete a pen and see how it looks.

Each piece of maple is only 1/8" thick. To show the scale, I'm including this picture that has my sample next to a dime. The length of the sample if just over 1 inch. The diameter of the sample is just about 3/8". The final diameter of a slimline pen would be a little bit smaller than this.



Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll have some time to work on putting that full sized blank together.

10 of 13

As of today, I have 10 of the 13 pens completed. The remaining three are ready to be turned. Here's a group shot of the 10.

Teacher Gifts continued

I completed two more of the techer gift pens tonight.

One uses a combination of black walnut and maple

and the other is sapele with maple accents.

I have to admit that I had stopped making slimline pens as I was getting a little bored with them and focused more on the cigar style. I'm happy I took on this task for my wife as it has really proven to me that a slimline doesn't have to be boring.

... now what more can I do???

A Baker's Dozen

My wife asked the other day if I could make a few pens for the teachers at the elementary school our two younger daughters attend. I told her I would do it, but that I wasn't going to "just turn a bunch of pens", I wanted to make something nice if I was going to do it.

I spent much of this past weekend just getting the pen blanks prepped. I've now completed four of the pens. Here's the first one.

I'm pretty happy with how it's come out. I used a new finish technique (CA/BLO) that I haven't used before and I'm quite pleased with the results. To see the others as they are completed, head on over to my other site...

New Sled

As I had mentioned in a previous post, my table saw died recently. One of my friends at work has been nice enough to let me borrow his to work on a few projects. To return the favor, I made him a table saw sled.



Having learned from the first sled I made, I decided I'd make this one a little more flexible. I wanted to make it so none of the great 20.5" x 32.5" space was wasted by attaching guide blocks in the middle of the sled. So I made a sub-assembly.



a couple of spring clamps hold the sub-assembly in place and now it's set to make some more segemented / laminated pen projects!



I hope he likes it as much as I do!!