I started this series of “Self-Framing Leaf Bordered” Wildlife a couple months ago and have been adding to it ever since. I plan to keep making them until I have at least 50 so this will be an ongoing project over the next year or two. :)

The animals in the portraits are (in order): Moose, (Grey)Wolves, Kodiak Bear, Screech Owl, Roe Deer, Monarch Butterfly, Grouse and a Whitetail Deer.

I really like using the bevel cut to recess the inner portrait which gives this “self-framing” effect. It works well, is easy to do and makes effective use of your wood. These are really fun to make, especially when it comes to cutting the inner portrait. I find it really cool how only a handful of cuts can make such a detailed portrait. Most of the inner portraits were very quick and fairly easy to cut.

I made them about 8” X 10” in size but did also make the pattern linework in a 10.5” X 13.5” size. This is the biggest I could fit on 2 sheets of normal printer paper but also works out to being close to the upper limit of what I find to be fun to cut on the scroll saw. (Also finding hardwood wider than 10.5” starts to get harder and more expensive.)

The backers were cut from 1/8” Baltic birch plywood and then stained with DecoArt Americana acrylics and all but the black ones have been mixed with DecoArt Staining & Antiquing Medium in order to convert them into a semi-transparent stain. I’m not too keen on the bright green background I used on the bear and roe deer, and also not a fan of the oak I used on the bear. Oak is not something that I use very often and after this project, I think I will keep away from it for this type of work.

Our “Forest Leaf” wildlife plaques have been around for quite a while. They were among Sheila’s earliest scroll saw pattern creations (some as part of a concerted effort with designer Bob Vallee), they have stood the test of time, and remain popular even today. The third picture here shows an example of these original Forest Leaves.

I am not sure why it took us so long to come up with the idea of ornament-sized versions. Sometime the obvious escapes us, but here we are.

It is quite challenging to make such a small project with enough detail to look nice, but without being a nightmare to cut or turning out too delicate to be useable. These actually turned out to be fairly easy to cut, but are still a little delicate. The maple I used had some hidden cracks that I missed and as a result, I had to do a couple minor repairs after cutting. They certainly require a solid piece of tight-grained wood. While we often use 1/8” thick material for ornaments, it would be best if we would have cut these out of something slightly thicker. 3/16” thick would be ideal but even 1/4” would still turn out nice.

When cutting thin material with small detail work in it such as this, I usually stack cut two sets at once since even the tiny 2/0 sized blades benefits from the added resistance of another layer. Even with woods as hard as hard maple which we often use, anything thinner than 1/4” starts getting more difficult to cut detail in, . I just stacked a piece of scrap 1/8” plywood with my hardwood as I often do since I only really want one finished set.

I started this clock nearly two years ago and when I hit a couple snags in my plans I got discouraged and put it aside for awhile. I was really having trouble figuring out how to cut and assemble the whole thing in a way that most anybody could do it with as few tools as possible. It also had to be reasonably easy for me to explain it in written instructions.

Fast forward two years down the road. I was looking at our site thinking we really need more clocks and I remembered that I had this almost entirely cut already, just waiting for me to figure out the final details of how to get it all together,so I just jumped in and did it, keeping it all as simple as I could. While I used a router to decorate the top and bottom and make the rabbet on the corner pieces, the whole thing could be made on a scroll saw if that’s the only tool you have with just a little extra work (as long as you have wood in the right thicknesses). You would just have to make the corner supports out of two pieces and use a bevel cut on the edges to decorate the top and bottom pieces. Of course you also need a drill to make your blade entry holes.

The glass is just clear plexiglass colored with DecoArt glass stain and the light is from a 4 watt nightlight on clip-on cord which fits in a 1” hole in the removable back access panel. (An access panel is needed so that you can reach in to change the battery on the clock movement since they are usually battery-powered)

This is my first try at a new kit recently made available from http://timberbits.com called “Spring Blossom”. Unfortunately it’s only available as a rollerball as of yet and due to the small inside diameter of the body, I doubt they ever plan to make a fountain pen version… Too bad.

It’s a very nice kit for the price. Seems like a very good value since the platings are platinum and gold titanium. The platinum isn’t as smooth and the kit seems to be not quite as good as more expensive kits such as the Statesman from Craft Supplies USA ( http://woodturnerscatalog.com ) but at well under half the price of a statesman it’s an awesome deal! The kit is only $14 but they list that as an introductory price.

The only downside to this kit is the huge difference in wood thickness between the cap and the body. This means that this kit is ill-suited for most acrylics (maybe all) since you will definitely see a color difference between both pieces. Even though the outer diameter of this pen is massive, the inner brass tube on the body is under 9mm in diameter.

The wood is a very highly figured piece of stabilized buckeye burl. It was sanded to 1000 grit and finished with 1 coat of thin CA glue followed by about 10 to 12 coats of medium CA. After letting the CA set for a couple days, I sanded with 400 grit, then wet sanded to up to 2000, polished with HUT plastic polish and buffed with an ultra-fine buffing compound.

I recently made the switch to wet sanding with regular wet/dry sandpaper instead of using Micro-Mesh sanding pads and found that I can get the same quality finish in less time.

This is the first of what I have dubbed the “Executive” series of pens. The kit is a rhodium and black titanium Statesman rollerball. This pen is quite large and is the first of this size I have made. I could only choose from among my largest blanks since the cap requires a 37/64 sized hole for the brass tube. It’s extremely hard to drill a hole of this size into a blank that’s any smaller than 7/8” thick. The wood is the most figured piece of vasticola burl that I had.

This was my 2nd attempt at this pen. On my first attempt, just as I was in the final buffing stage the blank got caught in the buffing wheel and launched into my lathe which cracked the blank… That prompted a few choice words!

I have been busy making a lot of other pens over the last couple weeks and I feel very satisfied with how most of them have turned out. This Honduran rosewood is the prettiest wood I have used so far. The finish is gold titanium.

The other 2 pens are… A chrome Baron fountain pen and Baroness (Sedona) rollerball. The fountain pen is another “burl & swirl” made from buckeye burl cast in blue & green acrylic. The rollerball is a beautiful blue acrylic that I think goes along perfectly with the chrome hardware. I like this one a lot and am very tempted to use it as my own personal pen.

The two wooden pens are finished with about 10 coats of CA glue, sanded to 12000 grit, polished with 3 coats of plastic polish and then buffed with an ultra fine plastic buffing compound. The acrylic is done without a CA finish.
The “burl & swirl” also needs to be sanded to at least 4000 grit before applying the CA due to the fact that sanding scratches are much more visible in the acrylic.

This is a gold titanium Sedona kit which I have dubbed the Baroness since it has all the same dimensions of the Baron kit but the curves and filigree make it seem more feminine in my eyes. Not that I think the pen would appeal more to the fairer sex, just that the pen itself is a she rather than a he :) . The blank is a buckeye burl with red pearlescent acrylic. I really like the look of these hybrid materials and plan to use a lot more.

I have also photographed all my pens and uploaded them to our site yesterday if anybody wants to see more of my work. I will be posting what I feel are the nicest ones, up here on LJ’s

This is my first Jr. Gent rollerball. The Baron I posted yesterday was actually made almost 2 weeks ago. After that pen, over the last 2 weeks, I have been exhausting every possible way to fail at making a pen. My reject pile got bigger, I did turn out a nice 2-tone chrome Sierra (I don’t have a pic of it) but other than that, I was unsuccessful. I really needed this success as I was getting quite discouraged. I got some advice and a pep talk from for fellow pen turners, I took my time, took no step for granted and turned this beauty. The hardware is black titanium.

This was my first rollerball pen. The hardware is gold titanium, which is probably THE most durable finish you can get and looks identical to 24k gold. The body is a gnarly buckeye burl piece filled with green pearlescent acrylic. I am moving up in the world of pen turning but the costs are going up exponentially as well :). I would really love to get into making my own acrylics & hybrids like this one but can’t afford to get into that just yet.

This is my second batch of pens that I made for sale. I am very pleased with how the maple burl ones turned out. I want to order some more burl blanks now :) I really want to get some afzelia and buckeye burls. Also may get some spalted elm and black ash burls.

These are the first pens that I have made that I consider to be up to the standard that I feel comfortable selling them with my name on them. (They are on the website in my signature under “Items For Sale” ) I do have a bunch of substandard “practice pens” and key chains that I don’t know what to do with. I guess everyone I know will be getting one for Christmas :). The first two pics are of opposing sides of the same pen.

I do most of the pen turning with a rouging gouge and Nanotools

I sand the wood ones up to 320 with the lathe running and then stop it and sand with the grain with 320-500 grit before applying CA finish. The acrylics get wet sanded to 12000 before putting a finish.They all get finished with about 4 coats of medium CA glue, wet sanded up to 12000 grit and polished with HUT plastic polish. I have gotten an acrylic buffing wheel and ultra fine acrylic compound but I can’t really notice any improvement after the HUT polish. Some of these pens have seen the buffing wheel and others haven’t.

I haven’t really gotten myself to turn much else on the lathe since the pens are so much fun and turn out so nice, but I do want to eventually get into doing hollow forms….Eventually :)

A while back I was asked to do a blog on segmentation to explain how it’s done. I know it took me awhile but here it is finally :)

When doing a project like this, once the pattern is printed and spray glued to the wood, I start out by cutting out all the pieces on the scroll saw and sticking them onto double sided carpet tape to keep organized as I go along.

I cut out veneer backers for as many pieces as I can which helps a lot with assembly and final placement. To cut the veneer on the scroll saw, I sandwich it between thin scrap and glue the pattern to the top layer. (even cardboard could be used in a pinch).

Later on after shaping and staining, the pieces will be glued to the backers as shown here:

Once the cutting is all done, I start shaping with a Dremel and the following bits:

When I put together pattern packets, I include many pictures of all the pieces taken at angles as to show the shaping that I did and help the customer as much as possible to be able to reproduce what I did.

I use lots of double sided tape as I am shaping because I keep taking pieces off, shaping them and re-placing them on the tape which eventually gets sawdust on it and loses it’s stickiness. I try to use wood that is thick enough so that I can do a lot of shaping. On most of my projects I use 3/8” to 1/2” maple or birch for this since it is cheap and also tight-grained so small pieces don’t break. And since these pieces are small, I don’t find it particularly hard to shape even though the maple is quite hard.

The letters were sanded down slightly to give the snow a raised appearance . This was done with a sheet of coarse paper on a flat surface because I didn’t have a belt sander at the time.

After shaping with coarse sanding drums or carving bits (The carbide Kutzall carving bit shown is a little too aggressive if the piece is so small that I can’t hold it firmly. I actually use the sanding drum more than the Kutzall) I use finer sanding drums, followed by the grinding bit and the diamond bit to remove the scratches. I follow this with hand sanding with 150 to 220 grit sandpaper to prep for staining.

Then I stain everything wiping off the stain on each piece as I go along except with the black which I find looks best with two solid coats providing full coverage. Once the stain is dry I glue the pieces that have veneer backers to their respective backers.

In this project I thought it best to varnish all the overlay pieces at this point so I could better get into all the crevasses. I used a matte or satin spray varnish from either Varathane or DecoArt Americana.

The plaque itself is maple and was finished with many coats of mineral oil and sealed with shellac.

When everything is varnished and dry, I dry place it all except the letters onto the plaque and proceed to glue the pieces one at a time beginning with the long piece of snow that the letters go on since that seemed like the best place to start.

This is really an easier form of carving since all your pieces are separate which preserves your lines. It’s also much easier to prepare and cut than intarsia. I really think this is something that just about anybody can learn to do in a very short period of time.

These are some new ornaments that I came up with. We had great success with our Native American Arrowhead ornament set so I decided to create a set of dreamcatcher ornaments that would hopefully be equally appealing. Although they are simple to cut, with a few embellishments, they came out pretty nice. I hope you all like them!

This is my home theater . It was built by me over the years. The TV cabinet was just thrown together in a hurry and is kinda embarrassing :).

The subwoofers are 15” in 4.5 cubic foot boxes made with 1.5” thick MDF (2 layers of 3/4” glued together) and they are HEAVY. They are powered by a 1600 Watt RMS Crown amplifier which never breaks a sweat since I probably only need about 1/10th of that.

I found a really nice sheet of birch veneered 3/4” plywood for the speakers. I was luckily able to book match them all around. The rounded moldings on them are pine but they match quite closely in color and I find that you can’t really tell. They were stained with a light stain but I can’t remember the color since it was quite a few years ago. These speakers are powered by a 75 Watt X 2 amplifier that I also built myself.

The whole system runs off my PC with wireless keyboard and mouse from the couch :)

Here’s a set of ornaments I just designed and cut… Well mostly. Sheila (Scrollgirl) cut the hard part for me while I was at work to help me meet a deadline. They turned out nicer than I expected. I am really happy with them.

Who hasn’t at one time or another felt that their world was a little bit crazy? With all the schedules and running around that everyone seems to be doing, sometimes it just feels like we are on a treadmill. This plaque is the perfect way to welcome others into your hectic world, and hopefully produce a few smiles in the process.

This overlay and segmented design is a great way to introduce yourself to segmentation if you have never tried it. The leaves are easy and very forgiving and will get you acclimated to the process of shaping your pieces using a rotary tool and hand-sanding. Environmentally-safe SamaN stain was used for coloring.

This is my second “portrait style” pattern. The wood used was 1/8” birch ply. I really like fantasy art and think he turned out ok but I don’t know how many scrollers out there are interested in such projects.

This is my first “portrait style” pattern and my first time playing with spiral blades. It took quite a few hours to cut but I think it it turned out pretty good. The wood used was 1/8” birch ply and the frame is just a Wal-Mart special :D