Pen assortment

[Brian G]

I made these over the course of the past few months, and finally got around to taking some pictures.

The first is a trio of Designers in padauk, cocobolo, and cherry with a celtic knot. The padauk and cocobolo were finished with CA and micromeshed to 12000; the cherry celtic was finished with Hut Crystal Coat.



Here's a close up of the celtic knot



Next is a pair of Stratus in olivewood and bubinga. Both were finished with Hut Crystal Coat. Of the less than two dozen pens I have turned, the bubinga and gun metal is my favorite.



I made the following Princess in blue buckeye burl as a birthday gift for my niece. Finish was CA and micromesh to 12000.


These four Wall St. IIs, three with a stylus, were made as gifts. The woods are redheart, bocote, East Indian rosewood, and cocobolo all finished with Crystal Coat.


Finally, here is a fatty of crosscut teak on a Guardian. LOML and I have dubbed it "The Turd" because that's what we think a turd would look like if it was cast and turned. Nice striations evoking the image of peristalsis.



Thanks for taking the time to look.

[LCHIEN]

How do you do the celtic knot?

[Brian G]

Loring,

I found a few tutorials by searching on "celtic knot pen turning" and went from there.

1.) First was laminating a piece of stock between two dyed pieces of veneer so that the total thickness was exactly the width of the kerf of my tablesaw blade. This ended up being just shy of 1/8". I cut roughly 1-1/2" lengths.

2.) I made a sled for the table saw, and fixed a backer fence at 45° to the blade.

3.) I started with a 1" square pen blank, and set the blade to 7/8" depth of cut.

4.) Next, after setting a stop block, I cut the first kerf and then super glued in the first piece of laminated material. Once the glue cured, I sanded the overhanging edges flush with the pen blank.

5.) After that, it's a matter of rotating the blank 90°, cutting a kerf, gluing in the laminated material, sanding flush, and rotating it to the next side.

Then it's normal pen making processes of drilling the center hole, gluing in the brass tube, and turning it down. It's cool to see the knot taking form, especially because it looks awful at the start and hard to tell that it would amount to anything.

I'm going to be making a few more soon, so I'll make sure to put together a photographic story board to show the process.

[chopnhack]

Nice work Brian! I love the celtic knot but especially loved the turd, ROFLMAO

[Whaler]

You have been busy, very nice work.

[Richard in Smithville]

Very nice work. I like the knot.

[Bill in Buena Park]

Nice work Brian. On the knot - it appears there's a darker color outside the 3-piece laminate sandwich - is this another laminate layer, or did you dye your glue?

[Brian G]

Thank you for the additional comments.

Bill, I think the CA glue darkened the veneer a little, but didn't soak all the way through the veneer slice. It was an accident.

As an aside, I was a little concerned that the dye was going to bleed into either the cherry or the birch I used for the "rope". Thankfully, it didn't bleed.

[Carpenter96]

Very nice work Brian. You have inspired me to try a Celtic knot.

Bob