| Blog series by darryl | updated 3 days ago | 4 parts | 601 reads | 7 comments total |
Part 1: The Background
I have had my lathe for about 18 months. I started right away turning pens. If I had to guess, I would say I have made somewhere around one hundred pens at this point. I have enjoyed turning pens since it’s typically a quick project cycle and provides that immediate sense of accomplishment. The majority of these 100+ pens were made using a single piece of wood or acrylic stock. That all changed at the end of 2007. A collection of early pens made with Bird’s Eye Maple and Rosewood. One o...
Part 2: Building Prototypes - Group 1
Prior to finishing my latest segmented pen, I cut several hundred segments with 22.5 degree angles to create a few more pens with eight segment layers. Having these pieces of Maple, Walnut and Jatoba, I thought it would be a nice way to get a good visual of what some different designs could be. Kind of like a rough sketch in 3-D. I didn’t want to get into gluing anything and commit myself to a design I didn’t fully like, so I carefully stacked my segments and let gravity hold everything to...
Part 3: Building Prototypes - Group 2
In my second group of prototypes I wanted to experiment with using just two species of wood. In these examples I have used Walnut and Maple. Of course any one of these designs could be created with a different selection of wood. I just wanted to mix things up a little to keep it interesting for myself. The first design I put together with the Walnut and Maple selections is based on the popular celtic knot design. In this version, I went with a single knot. I didn’t think the design would b...
Part 4: scallops
I have seen other penmakers use this scallop techinique and thought I would give it a try. To start out I wanted to get an idea of what size I need to use initially to know what to expect when the blank is turned down. So far I like how everything is looking. I want to try incorporating this and a couple other segmenting techniques I used to come up with something a little crazier than I’ve done previously. I’ve got several long weekends coming up so hopefully I should hav...
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Blog Series
- Prototypes - 4 parts
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