A day's worth of turnings....

[Phillip H Smith]

Yesterday, my wife was away at a conference....so I played hooky from the yard work, etc. and spent my whole day in the shop.

The cherry "catch all" for my wife's dresser is made from two pieces of cherry flat stock scraps. It measures 8 X 1 inches, finish is Antique Oil.

The pens are (l to r): Brazilian cherry, Yellowheart with Padauk (the thin black line separating the two woods is from a floppy disk), Purpleheart (the white stripe is a piece of a credit card), Mahogany with Padauk (which is sandwiched with aluminum from a soda can).

OK...now I GOTTA go mow the lawn!!!

[Nancy Laird]

Phil,

The "catch-all" is lovely, and I really like the pens, too.

But, one question: do you find that you have problems turning the tenons on those Europeans? We turned a few and found that getting that tenon just exactly right was a pain where I sit.

Nancy

[Mike A. Smith]

Very creative on the pens and very nice looking. I haven't seen this done before, but I like it alot.

[Phillip H Smith]

Thanks for the nice comments on my recent pens. Below are some comments about the pen "decorations" and making the tenons easily.

The "decorated" pens are very easy to do. I simply cut the blanks at an angle, usually 40 or 45 deg., then glue in the inserts with CA gel. After a few minutes of clamping time, they're ready to go. I've got some old work reports held together with those plastic binder "thingys" that are in various colors. My next project will be to use some of those to make different colored stripes. I think the Yellowheart might look really nice with some red, green and blue stripes. Other things I'm going to try are thin brass or copper strips. (Stickley Furniture, here in my hometown, has a line products with copper inserts to highlight the drawer pulls. I think that look would be "sharp" on pens, too!)

As for the tenons, NO..I don't find them too hard to do. I have a parting tool, from PSI, that is just the right width to make a properly sized tenon -- as far as width goes. To get the right depth/thickness, I go slow and try to hit the mark. Sometimes I need to do a bit of light sanding to get the right thickness...and sometimes I need to use CA gel to hold the center band, if I go too far. Regardless, I always use a dab or two of CA to hold the center band -- just in case.

I bought a "sizing sleeve" to replace my "trial and error method," which is an old center band on the stepped bushing. I thought that would make life easier...but it didn't. The problem is that the sizing sleeve is held on the step bushing with a small set screw. If you back the screw out to use the sleeve to "test" the size of your tenon, you risk having the screw fly off somewhere in your shop. Fortunately, when that happened to me, the screw landed on the back of my work bench. Whew ---- I thought I was going to have a HARD time finding that very tiny screw!

To save my sanity and time hunting for that darn screw, I've mainly gone back to my "old ways." That is, I hold the "waste" center band on with a bit of tape. I size the blank to the OD of the center band, remove the tape, slide the band back, and cut the tenon. With the center band free on the step bushing it's easy to slide it over to test the tenon width while the lathe is running. One trick that usually always works is to overlap the end of the bushing by about a 32nd with the parting tool. That way the tool "digs" down to the right depth and stops at the bushing. If you want to extend the tenon length a bit and square up the shoulder, then use a skew. Works (almost!) every time.

Any "overage" in length is easily trimmed away with a pen mill. Actually...I like to have the tenons a bit on the short side, so the pen barrel fits slightly up inside the center band. It impresses me as being a bit of a better fit 'n finish.

I've also made some pens without a center band. I round over the bottom of the upper blank, then cut in a couple of grooves with a skew, then burn in the lines with stranded wire (guitar strings work really well). And, I've also made some pens with wood center bands. You can drill a center band blank with a 1/4" bit, then turn it to size. Use care to keep it square for a good fit. If you don't want the band to be "free," you can glue it to the upper blank -- an old pen twist mechanism works well as a sizing jig for this operation.

Finally, here's a tip about sanding. I've always had difficulty keeping the dust of dark woods from staining the lighter woods....as well as, drag over from the bushings putting metal on the pen blanks. To avoid this problem, I bought a bunch of nylon spacers at a hardware store, drilled 'em out to 7mm and inserted brass pen tubes. (You can put 3 or 4 spacers on a standard Slim Line tube.) I then separated the spaces and turned them to the size of my various bushings. The seem to hold up fairly well...as long as you don't sand on them too hard. Swapping the metal bushing out with the nylon ones after turning to size, keeps me from discoloring my lighter wood pens as I'm sanding them.

[Wayne Bitting]

Phil - simply put I love your pens!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Cherry dish is great. Love what you did with the pens. Nice job.

[Earl Reid]

Nice going Phil on the pens. I may try some of your ideas:)

Earl

[Patrick Taylor]

Great work Phillip! I love the ideas for segmented pen boundary layers... very nice. Glad to hear your synthetic bushings are working well for you.

Nancy, I still can't get the "press" fit right on the euro style tenon (I always go a few mils too far), but with a dab of CA you can never tell. ;)

[Christopher K. Hartley]

...OK...now I GOTTA go mow the lawn!!!
Phil...Phil...Phil, turn a couple of extra pens and sell or trade them for the yard work. Now you can turn much more often!:D Great job on those items!!:)