Whole Lotta Pens.... (and a bottle stopper)

I've spent the last couple nights working on some thank you gifts for people I work with. The folks these are going to have been a huge help to me in my first year with the company.

Two new ones...

This first one is blue granite and black acrylic. Very comfortable to write with...

This one if probably my favorite pen so far. It is turned from stabilized Buckeye Burl and the hardware is gold and black titanium. I love this pen

Olivewood...

Here's last night's project. It's Olivewood on a Black Chrome Cigar Pen kit.

Tonight I start work on some thank you gifts for folks I work with. I'm approaching the one year mark in the new job, and there are a few people who have been a huge help along the way. I've already finished a bottle stopper for one of them, and will be making pens for four others. I'll have pics later this week of them.

Thanks for looking!

Spalted Maple and Orange Crush....

So I decided to turn a pen using one of the spalted maple blanks I posted a couple blogs ago. I am extremely disappointed in these blanks. They were advertised as being stabilized using a pressure injected acrylic. Stabilization is used primarily to strengthen softer woods, like spalted woods which are actually a diseased wood. The black lines and are caused by a fungusm and this makes the wood extremely soft and difficult to turn without tearing big chunks out of it. Anyway, One of the nice side effects of properly stabilized wood is that it usually will polish up to a high gloss shine without too much difficulty. Anyway, these blanks weren't stabilized, just brushed on the outside with a resin. The end result is that I have 4 extremely soft pen blanks that require a lot more work than I hoped.

So here's the pen I turned tonight. Used A LOT of CA glue to strengthen it during the turning to keep it from tearing. Was basically a huge pain in the ass....

I plan on ordering a batch of stabilized burls and spalts here shortly so hopefully I'll have some real eye popping work coming up. I think I'm going to look into a pressure tank as well so I can stabilize my own blanks, and Bunky can cast her own acrylic blanks.

And just because I can, here's a pic of the pen I did for AutumnRocks last week...

.30-06 with a walnut stock...

Not really, but it is a .30-06 shell casing mated up with walnut. I'm extremely happy with this one since I finally nailed the CA (krazy glue) finish. I still need to polish the shell casing but I don't have any Brasso right now. Next up for this type of pen will be the shell casing mated with deer antler.

I'm not really happy with the clip on this one and need to figure out another option for the next pen....