Some new pens and problems

Caragana brothers and sisters.
Some very nice patterns!

This past several weeks I have been trying to get into the shop more often to do some turning. There have also been some new woods added from unusual places. I have found a new source of good hardwood and even some unusual woods at The Habitat Restore. The local store gets hardwood door samples from closeouts etc. and sells them for a very reasonable price. I paid $3 Can for about 12 X 12 inch doors and chose hickory and birch this trip. They had lots of oak and cherry doors as well. Even though the doors are usually coated, they cut up and turn quite nicely. I could not believe how hard hickory is! No wonder it gets used in bats. The outside frame is 3/4 inch and if there is a centre raised panel it is 5/8. There were even solid doors of laminated cherry for instance. Each paneled door makes 12 to 15 blanks plus there are lots of odds for other projects.
The hickory centre panel worked very good to make my first perfume applicator. Here is a good pdf of the kit.

One thing which has been disturbing is the darkening of pores in the wood with finish sanding. This really shows up in the very light woods. My answer is that I have been sanding over the bushings and transferring filings to the wood. It takes a lot of learning to get this process right.

Still, this is a very satisfying thing to be learning and working at!

I been turning and there is lots more to learn!

Here are couple of pens which I turned recently. The top one is from the wood in my previous post. It comes from China and is light colored with some grey coloring here and there. Quite nice in reality.
Number 2 is from curly makore (Windsor Plywood). It turns very nicely but the light areas tend to be softer and sand out quickly to leave a ribbed effect.







The next picture is an East Indian Rosewood. A very dark wood with nice deep coloring and darker veins.















These are caragana which I cut up in November. It is mostly dry already so I turned 2 pens to try it out. The first pen is nice except that the centre wood was very punky and did not finish smoothly. There is likely an answer to this but practice is likely the first. These look pretty good so I will try a couple of slimlines and either another European or Streamline. There are more pieces to cut up as well as a piece of Siberian Crabapple.





Caragana #1
















Again!
















The pen on the right is the last one in caragana and the final picture is a group shot.

There is a lot to learn and practice to get a real good job and I hope over the next few weeks I can make some better quality turnings. Christmas did present a number of new pieces of wood to work with as well as a few pieces from William Wood-Write.

New works

Well sometimes you need to turn to strange sources for pen turning wood. I found these tree staking packages at the Princess Auto store locally.















Each kit has 3 wood stakes about 14 inches long and they looked like interesting wood so for $3.95 a package I bought 5. They are made in China so no identification of the wood but the first pen I made looks like oak to me. The picture is of the Streamline Chrome I made from this wood and the "Cigar" pen is one my son made out of deer antler. We need to make some kind of picture box to get a better shot.

Quiet days

Well things have been very quiet as far as pen turning goes but I bought a Twist Cigar kit from Lee Valley today which will make 2 pens. Just need to settle on the wood. Maybe Monday I can do a couple if it is cold; otherwise it is clean up the yard for winter.

In the beginning

Working at Lee Valley Tools gives one access to new horizons and one of those horizons is the seminars they offer to customers and staff. This late summer I took a class in pen turning and really enjoyed the learning experience.

So we have bought a General "Maxi- lathe" Model 25-100M1 off of the Calgary website of www.Kijiji.ca. It came with a small set of lathe tools and a few other items. Other tools and supplies have been added since to collect dust, store supplies, finish and store.

The first three pens are done and there will be pictures soon. That does not mean the first three were successful in all ways but they are finished!