Pen Riddle

[Horst Hohoff]

Hello,
Two new pens from me. A Cigar and a button click. And a like you to guess what they are made of.
Critiques welcome.

80764 80765

[Chris Fierro]

Easy one. Bamboo. I have done a few of these--very nice to buy a $5 cutting board from a kitchen supply place and turn it into 15 pen blanks.

Nice work!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Horst those are a couple of good looking pens. Not sure what they are made of.

[robert hainstock]

brass, steel, maybe ceramic, wood, more wood. Am I getting warm?:confused::confused:
Bob

[Ben Gastfriend]

Bamboo? Neat-o! Great pens, do you get alot of tearout on the endgrain?

[Chris Fierro]

When I have turned bamboo, I have found that you need very sharp tools--and you are best off with a skew and maybe finishing with a shear scraper. I of course relied on the 60 grit gouge quite a bit. It is very stringy, particularly when roughing down. Be prepared for lots of long sharp stringy strands. Don't quite need gloves but you could use them if you were in a production setting.

I also found that you can laminate the pieces for thicker stock. I made one tool handle out of bamboo. It is incredibly light and stiff.

[Horst Hohoff]

Hello,
Of course Chris is right: it's bamboo.
And I can only confirm what he said about working the stuff. You can get tearout in every stage of the work ( except sanding ). When you drill a blank it's best done from both sides; otherwise see above. When I did the button click pen I ruined 4 blanks in one way or another before I ended up with a finished pen. And that was with a lot of help of the 60 grit gouge.

Horst