My last posting (a long time ago!) was about capless pens. I mentioned the use of a homemade mandrel for turning the capless pen, and that I was convinced I needed to buy a real one. So, $70 later (to Arizona Silhouette) and I had the capless pen mandrel, the lathe chuck, and oh by the way, a mandrel for bottle stoppers and some bottle stopper kits.

In any case, here’s a new capless Euro-style pen made of cocobolo and ebony, plus two regular capped pens – one in big leaf maple burl and the other in spalted maple. The spalted maple blank came in the 2nd pen swap, by the way! It’s my first pen made from one of the blanks from the giant box of wonder.

These are all made from Woodcraft “premium” kits. I wanted to see how they’d come out, and got a few when they were on sale a few months ago. I haven’t actually used any of these pens, since I hope to sell them or (depending on whether anyone deserves them) give them away as birthday or other presents.

I was not originally planning to include the ebony on the first two pens, but that came about due to – guess what? – a blowout on each blank as I was facing the brass tubes. It’s not that I hadn’t thought of using additional woods in this way, but that was going to be a future experiment. But necessity is the mother of invention, so I cut into my thirty-year old ebony turning blanks, that I got when I was a kid planning to make musical instruments – six 20×2x2 ebony blanks for about $30 at the time!

I mentioned in my last project that I was continuing to work on “getting outside the pen kit box.” These two pens are my latest in that trajectory. The parts are from a slimline kit, but I left off the center band and turned the top portion without a cap, using a shopmade mandrel. They’re made of cocobolo. I was pleased with how they came out, and the people I gave them to at Christmas we’re pretty happy, I think!

Here’s a picture of the mandrel I made – I just mounted a chunk of maple in my chuck and turned it down until the pen tube in the cap portion of the pen blank had a good tight slip fit. It wasn’t ideal, as there was a lot of slippage. I don’t think I could use this same mandrel again. I’m planning to buy a real mandrel (from Arizona Silhouette) so I don’t have to keep turning new ones.

Mandrel without pen blank

Mandrel with pen blank mounted

Ever since I started making pens last year I wanted to step outside the bounds of the basic kit-driven pen. Here are some of my first attempts at that. The easiest customization to make with a standard pen kit is to leave off the center band. This allows you to make a Euro shape from a slimline, for example, as shown in the first two pictures.

The first one is a red swirly acrylic, not even sure the name, made from a slimline kit without the center band. The second picture is a pen and pencil set made from some bush I removed from our yard – I have no idea what the main wood wood. The center band in these pens is Kingwood. And the basic kits are slimlines (pen and pencil).

The third pen is the first one I did without a center band. Based on a Euro kit, made of Kingwood, I just decided I didn’t really need a center band, it disrupted the flow of the wood, and it was constraining. I’m sure the result is a bit more fragile, but it was a gift for an adult, so I thought it would be OK.

The wooden pens are sanded to at least 600 grit and finished with BLO and CA glue; the acrylic just with MicroMesh to 12000 grit.

My next customization will be to turn a slimline pen without either the center band or the end cap. This will allow me, for example, to create a Euro-style end on the pen, but in wood rather than metal. I’ve currently got the pieces for that project cut out, and a mandrel on the lathe, so that should be my next project posting in a week or two.

Here are three pens I made as birthday presents earlier this year. First is a Lacewood American Classic fountain pen. I made a Lacewood slimline pen earlier this year and felt that the character of the Lacewood didn’t come through on such a small barrel. I’m much happier with this pen, since there’s so much more wood to see. Another experiment I did recently was to turn a slimline with a little bit of shaping. (You can see that one on the far right of the first picture on my previous project posting.) So that’s another thing I did with this pen – added a little “womanly” shaping to it. I think it came out nice, although I also want to try it with the lower barrel nipped in, instead of the upper barrel.

The other two pens are Kingwood Designer-style. I left the center band off of both of these. I’d been having bad luck with my center band sizing (I think my bushings are a little off, actually) and I just like the look of an all-wood pen anyway. You might notice an interesting feature on the second pen. I accidentally mounted the blanks in the wrong order on the mandrel, so the lower barrel – usually the longer piece – is the shorter piece. This meant I had to pay a little extra attention when inserting the pen mechanism, since it had to be inserted about 1/8” less than usual. But, as I reasoned, the pen as a whole remains the same length, so its operation is fine.

The pens are all finished with CA and BLO – I find that works extremely well and is very fast. First I sand to 400 or even 800 grit before finishing. Then, with the lathe spinning, I apply some BLO to a paper towel folded lengthwise to a strip about 1” wide, apply the BLO to one barrel, then drop a small amount of thin CA onto the barrel and polish it with the paper towel. I understand the cellulose in the paper towel acts as an accelerant for the CA – in any case it’s extremely quick, and it looks very good. Nothing further is required. In fact, if you do the same thing again, it often causes the finish to get less smooth, rather than smoother.

I’ve been turning a few pens a month, maybe more, and wanted to share some of the new ones. One of these is my current “daily writer” – the copper Euro pen made with “Cats Eye” acrylic. I got the kit and the blank from Woodturningz. I just made the Slimline pencil yesterday, from a Woodcraft blank called “Tequila Sunrise” or something like that, and I think it’s going to become a favorite as well. I decided not to turn it “bushing to bushing” as I usually do, and left a very slight little bulge in it, that I think will be quite pleasant to use. In general, though, I must say I prefer the Euro-style pens to all the others I’ve made.

From left to right, these are four Euro pens, in Zebrawood, Sea Foam acrylic, stained maple (not a good idea, as it turns out), Cats Eye; a cigar pen in “Fire and Ice”; and the slimline pencil.

One thing I’ve learned is that while acrylic is especially challenging to turn, it’s much more time-consuming than (most) woods. The zebrawood pen took about ten minutes to turn, while the slimline pencil took almost an hour, because it’s much faster to take off wood than it is to take off acrylic. On the other hand, I’m not showing the Amboyna Burl pen I made last week, because it ended up exploding off the brass tube so often I had to abandon it when I couldn’t find all the pieces to glue back on. So far on Amboyna Burl I’m 2 for 4. I’m hoping the first two weren’t just beginner’s luck.

This is a version of the Arts and Crafts Lamp and Shade from a 2003 Wood Magazine article. The only major modification I made was to use paper for the shade rather than mica. I also, as you’ll see below, don’t have the right lighting fixture in it – I have found a source on the Internet but haven’t had a chance to order it.

I started on this lamp odyssey by building a prototype (just as Norm does every week!) using pine. That’s been sitting on my wife’s bedside table for about a year now, with a store-bought shade that’s not really the right size. She’s gone this weekend – when she gets home tomorrow she’ll have the real lamp with the real shade.

Prototype lamp

After building the prototype, I still wasn’t ready to spring for “the good stuff” – meaning quartersawn white oak – so I bought red oak stock at the Borg. But, I was inspired to try to simplify and improve the production of the corbels on the base, so I built a jig to hold the roughly bandsawn blanks and act as a template for routing them on the router table. Long story short, this didn’t really work, primarily because a) I didn’t rough cut them close enough to the line, and b) my clamping arrangement was not able to withstand the torque of the router. The end result was corbel blanks being ejected from the jig.

Aside from shaping the corbels, which I found challenging especially with my non-working jig, the construction of the base is quite straightforward, with the slight challenge of the arms being attached with sliding dovetails. This would be easier now with my Incra jig – but as this project took very very long, the base was fully completed – even finished, before I got the Incra jig for Christmas.

Detail of lamp base

The construction of the shade was quite a bit trickier, as there are a lot of angles to be dealt with. The shade is made of four frames, built with half lap joinery in 1/4×1/2 stock. The Wood Magazine article had instructions for a jig for holding the rails and stiles for the rabbetting, which I used with a dado stack, but I was unhappy with it for various reasons. When I recently made a second set of frames, I just used my miter gauge and nibbled with the regular saw blade. Worked much better, and was faster.

The other challenge with the shade was that these little, light frames then had to be mitered, at 27 1/2 degrees, to glue up into the full shade. I do not have an accurate way to set the angle of my table saw, so my first try was not quite right. At that point, I was dead in the water, until I got my Dixie digital angle gauge at the Woodworking show in November. I used that to set my planer fence to the correct angle, and used the planer to give me the correct angle. This was great, except that the planer tore out a bit of the tops of my frames, so I made my one other modification of the design, which was to put a little cap frame around the top opening of the shade to hide the tearout!

Disassembled lamp with the shade sitting next to it

I finished the lamp with Dark Walnut stain, covered with Dark Walnut Danish oil, and then amber shellac. This was based on a recipe in one of the woodworking magazines last year, to get a good A&C-looking finish without fuming. I have to say it’s not bad, although my technique in applying it could be significantly improved. I may have also used some Cherry stain as well. I finished the base months ago, and the shade a few weeks ago.

Finally, this weekend I glued the paper onto the shade. I bought the paper at Mika’s Japanese paper store in Berkeley just after Christmas. I was worried about working with it, but finally just said the heck with it, and went ahead. I used Titebond III to attach the paper to the frame, since after the glue dried I wanted to wet it and let it dry, to get it taut.

Glueing the paper to the lamp shade frame

Shade with all four paper panels glued in

The shade turned out very nice. I hope the picture below shows the very interested pattern on the paper.

Shade paper detail

As I mentioned in some earlier posts, I had asked Santa for an Incra Precision Positioning jig for Christmas. Santa came through for me, and I have finally completed my first project made with the jig. My goal was to practice creating some dovetails and otherwise learning to use the jig.

Before I could use the jig, I needed to put a router table extension onto my old Craftsman 9” table saw, and install the insert I bought almost a year ago. So I finally got that done in January.

Then I could start using my new jig.

As I said, my main goal was to create some sawdust, but I thought I might as well exercise some design sensibility. The first thing I did was come up with some dimensions that I thought would look good, remembering the “golden ratio”, or for the purposes of this box, 8” x 5”. That meant my stock should be 5” wide. And based on the dovetail router bits I had, part of a big Ryobi set, I was limited to making half-blind dovetails in 1/2” stock. Since I don’t have a planer or a working jointer (another project that has to be done eventually), I depended on Big Orange for my lumber – luckily they had 1/2×5 1/2” red oak lumber, and that’s what I used for the sides. The top and bottom are 3/4” stock, also 5 1/2” wide.

The bottom is joined to the sides with a simple rabbet, and I made a small chamfer around the edge to give it a bit of decoration. The lid is rabbeted to fit into the opening of the sides.

Since I was already thinking about making the box look reasonably nice, even though it was just for practice, I wanted to make good handle for the lid. My grab bag of pen blanks from Woodcraft happened to have a piece of purpleheart that was just not the right size for a pen. But it would be great as a handle. I was imagining a sinuous shape, something like a breaking wave, that would contrast nicely with the very plain and square lines of the box itself. I traced out my ideas onto the purpleheart, then used the bandsaw to cut it roughly to shape.

As I started in with the rasp to finalize the shape, I realized I really hadn’t cut off enough, and went back to the bandsaw. I did a lot of the overall shaping with a block plane as well. (When my wife first saw the handle, she said it looked like something the dog left – happily, she liked it when it was finished.)

The finish is two coats of clear water-based polyurethane on the purpleheart handle, with “Walnut” Danish oil followed by amber shellac on the box itself.

I definitely learned a lot in this first project. Probably the most important thing was how critical the dimensions of the stock is. Especially the width of the stock, especially when using an Incra jig for the joinery. Because of the way you cut the joints, you’re always working from the same side of the stock, which means that after making four joints, you have multiplied any dimension problem by four. I believe stock varied by between 1/64” and 1/32” in width along its length, necessitating some serious sanding to get the side assembly to lie flat on top and bottom.

Well, as others have attested, pens are a very gratifying project! And the family is going to like them a lot for Christmas (I hope). I have a few more to do, but here’s the current production.

From left to right and top to bottom, these are:

• Zebrawood American Classic ballpoint
• Zebrawood Artists Pencil
• Acrylic American Classic ballpoint (I know, not technically “lumber”, but still beautiful)
• Cedar American Classic Rollerball
• Purpleheart and Canarywood American Classic Fountain Pen
• Amboyna Burl American Classic ballpoint

Most of this wood came from a Woodcraft grab bag, so I’m only guessing on the zebrawood, purpleheart, canarywood, and cedar. I was just going to make up wood names for my family, sending them off on a tizzy of research on Google and the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but I decided that would be too mean.

All the pen kits are from Woodcraft. I’m trying a lot of different kits to see which I like best – any recommendations would be welcome.

The Amboyna burl came from Global Wood Source in San Jose – for some reason they had an eight-blank package of Amboyna for $8! Even if all I get out of it is this pen, I’ll be very pleased, but I have drilled and cut blanks for a fountain pen/rollerball set (also American Classic) that I’ll be making for a special girl who had a big year this year – so I’m hoping I can get them to the finishing stage without too much exploding. The pen in the picture had two big chunks fly off during turning, which I was able to glue back on invisibly. I literally cannot find the glue line. It’s beautiful – and smells great while you’re turning it – but honestly, it’s nasty – basically all end grain, and very brittle.

After blowing my budget at the woodworking show on Saturday (see blog entry for my new toys), I apparently still was not recovered from the shopping bug, so I went to Woodcraft on Monday night and created a “startup pen turners” kit for myself. By this time the budget was in smithereens, but though I felt guilty, I went ahead anyway.

The wife was out at a meeting, not due back until about 9:30, so I felt fine about setting up the turning station (see my blog for the transition of workbench loaded with crap to turning station). And a pen is quick, right? In fact, I wasn’t even going to be turning at all that night, just setting up the station, and then, like a normal person, heading to bed. I had another little glue up to do anyway, and besides, who needs to start a new project at 9:30 pm?

But then I thought I’d open the pen kit up and see if I could figure out how all the pieces went together. And how they went on the mandrel with the bushings, etc. Oh, and I might as well choose the wood and cut the blanks. And drill them. and glue in the tubes. In the meantime I had to go back in the house to get on the ‘net to find the directions for the pens, so I could see how they went together. And at that point since I had all the pieces on the mandrel anyway, and I’d set up the turning station, I would at least round up the blanks.

Anyway, I took the picture at 1:00 am. I’m not sure what the wood is – part of my “pen turners kit” was a 5 lb bag of unmarked blanks. I chose a blank that looked interesting – lots of contrasting grain, which I love. The pen is the Woodcraft American Classic ballpoint. I finished it with HUT Crystal Coat.

This is the supposedly ”$100 workbench in a weekend” from a Shop Notes article last year. It ended up costing about twice that, even at about half the size of the bench in the article, and built with redwood rather than hardwood. The original was 7 1/2 feet long and just under three feet deep. I modified all the dimensions so my bench is 4’ 4” by 2’ 4”, since it has to fit in my very small one car garage with a lot of other stuff. It’s built with redwood and MDF. After I finished it, I was able to find a good deal on a quick-release woodworker’s vise, and installed that as well. (The first picture shows the vise in the process of being installed – the jaws are poplar, which I’ll replace with a piece of maple I have since bought.)

I’m most proud of the “cloud lift” pattern I made on the end pieces of MDF – it was the first time I’d done pattern routing. (With my router I got for Christmas 2006.)

The bench has wheels attached to one set of legs that I can use by tilting up the other end. However, it’s so heavy that this is not really feasible (the top is four layers of MDF!) so my next workshop project is to add an additional set of wheels ala the ones Norm Abrams showed on a workbench project on a NYWS episode, where the wheels drop down when you lift the end of the bench and get locked down with some hinged pieces of wood. I haven’t quite figured out how to attach them yet, and they’ll probably hide my cloud lift, sadly.