A pen

This is Pen 2, but attempt 20 or so. I believe the wood is Padauk. I got it in a starter kit that had a bunch of blanks and pen kits.

I sealed it with Linseed oil and Loc-tite Superglue. I’ve seen people go up to 2000 grit sand paper. I haven’t tried that, but I think the 600 grit came out fine. I think I’ll try some 2000 grit on the next one. For some reason, it is hard to find 7mm drill bits and really fine grain sandpaper in Atlanta.

One thing I did was put a handful of shaving on the back of a piece of sandpaper, crank it the lathe of to 11 and held it on there for a little while.

The rubber grip comes off. I think you are supposed to take off more wood than I did, so it fits on the pen’s support tube, but I like the idea of being able to remove it to see the pretty wood.

This pen was actually a commission. Somebody saw pen 1 on Flickr and asked me to make him one. I’m still a little shakey on getting the geometry of my turnings right.

-- Sometimes... At night... My router tells me to do things to wood. Bad Things.