New pens

[Doug Jones]

Just finished these pens thought you may get a kick out o them. From top to bottom; spalted hackberry (I think), maple burl, and corncob. Thanks for looking.

[Keith Outten]

Nice work Doug,

A Corn Cob Pen...what a hoot :) Yours is the first corn cob pen I have ever seen :)

[Jim Becker]

A Corn Cob Pen...what a hoot :) Yours is the first corn cob pen I have ever seen

I second that emotion!! Very unique. Great job, Doug! I guess you're happy you bought that lathe after all... :p

[Julie Wright]

Cool looking Pens, so how did you make the corn cob pen?

[Brad Schafer]

agreed with others on the CC pen - excellent. :) what kind of corn cob (field, sweet, Indian)? how did you get it hard enough to maintain shape?


b

[Noah Alkinburgh]

Doug,

They look very nice. That corncob is cool. I had read about that before. Did you use the method of dripping (pouring might be a better term) CA on it as you went to stabalize? Job well done.

Noah

[Scott Greaves]

A nice article about making corn cob pens is posted on the Penturners.org site. Here's the link:

http://www.penturners.org/content/CornCobPen.pdf

I hope this helps.

Scott.

[Aaron Koehl]

Doug,

Nice Job!

I wonder if we can't get a nice step-by-step article on the unique facets of creating corn cob pens..?

-A

[Brad Schafer]

scott - tnx for the article pointer. i thot maybe hardness was dependent on the type of cob. guess it's glue (like everything else these days).

doug - i like your pen better than the one in the article. better pattern/character. nice,

b

[Doug Jones]

I first went out to the corn field across the road and found the smallest ears of corn I could find. I let them set for a day to bring up to room tempature. Once to room temp, I soaked them in a 50/50 mix of wood glue and water for 24 hours. After the soaking I layed them out on a piece of newspaper for one week rotating every once in awhile and even standing them on end (bottom end). Then I cut the corn blanks to size, using only the bottom ends (smaller pith in the bottom ends). I then drilled the holes. After drilling I did the glue soaking thing again, (in my way of thinking this would insure a more solid center, letting the glue soak into the center more evenly). Again, after the soaking I layed them out on a piece of newspaper for one week rotating every once in awhile. Then I inserted the tubes using polyurathane glue and letting that set for 24 hours to cure. Then just did the rest as you would do any other pen. Except for the edges of the blanks. Go very gingerly on the edges, it doesn't take much to chip them. This may not be the best or most effective way but it is the way I did it. And I have nothing but time.

Hope this helps anyone that might try to do a corn cob pen.

I also was recently told that indian corn works the best cause it has the smallest of piths than any other corn. By the way in case you didn't catch it , I used regular old Indiana field corn.