I then applied a heavy coat of tung oil.

Next is polyurethane.

This is my first project that I consider “furniture”. I’ve been limited to shop fixtures, cutting boards, pens, etc.

I live in Abilene, Texas, and we have a great mesquite supplier – Lankford Mesquite. I ended up with beautiful 4/4 boards for $12/board foot. They were around 13” wide & 7’ long. I had some pecan that I had been saving.

Here’s the initial layout:

I don’t have a jointer, so I dimensioned the boards on the table saw/miter saw. Then I planed to uniform thickness.

3 separate glue-ups to make it easier for me.

I was worried that the 1” thickness wouldn’t be visually proportionate, so I added a pecan trim.

Then lots & lots & lots of sanding to get to this point.

To be continued…..

One of my partners was going on a trip to Greece last month. Before leaving he asked me about making him a pen out of a piece of olive wood that he picked up while he was there. I gladly agreed and told him that 1” square by 6” long would be plenty. On his trip he looked everywhere but couldn’t seem to find a piece to buy. He even tried to sneak up on a downed limb to take a piece and was quickly run off by a man screaming at him in Greek. He and his wife stopped in a bakery. Glancing over the counter he saw 3 rolling pins that looked very nice, and the baker told him that, in fact, they were all made of olive wood. My partner talked the baker into selling one of the rolling pins – 8 Euro ($11).

He was quite excited about his find. My first reaction was that there was no way I could “destroy” that beautiful rolling pin. For several days I tried to talk him into keeping it in its original form. He was dead set on having a pen made from it.

I really wanted to utilize as much of the pin as I could. First I cut off the ends and decided to make bottle stoppers.

I chose to keep the stoppers as they were when he acquired the pin (without any additional finish). I thought this might help him remember the stop in the bakery a little.

My next issue was how to break down the rolling pin into as many usable pieces as possible. I first cut the pin in half in case I ruined it on a cut – I would still have the other half to work with. I ruled out using my table saw because I didn’t want to lose 1/8” from the cut. Bandsaw was my next choice. I certainly don’t have the ability to pass a round piece accurately (and keep all my fingers). My buddy came up with this idea.

This worked great.

These 2 pieces were then cut on the bandsaw to give me 4 “pen blanks” from half of the rolling pin. I now had some pieces that I felt like I could turn into pens. Here are the first 2:

So that’s where I sit now. I still have the other half, which is the better piece. I’ll probably use it for some fancier pens.

to be continued…......