Cigar Pen

I really like the knot concept.

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

and the contrasts in colour – stunning

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

There seem to be quite some people making pens.
I must say that I never saw this before, and it’s quite intreaging.

Does anyone have a suggestion how I could learn to make them?

Here’s where I learned:

http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/Gary/blog/series/266

-- Maplewood, MN

Nice work!

-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28

Nice pen, I also like the contrasting woods.

-- Andy Stark

Outstanding work. The contrast of the color tones works beautifully, and the knot looks terrific. How long did it to set up?

-- Mark, Florida, http://penturner.wordpress.com/

Thanks Mark. I cut and glued the insets last night. I used Titebond III, so I clamped and let the first cut cure for about three hours, and the other one overnight. I turned it this morning with no issues.

-- Maplewood, MN

Very nice looking Pen. Does the Birds Eye maple have any eyes showing in the small pieces. I like to use crotch wood for the figure in small pieces.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

Rik,
Great job. Seeing the results of your work and the others that’ve been done makes the time spent writing the how-to all the more worthwhile. The ebony looks great with the maple.
Glad my previous post served you well.

Gary

Karson: There isn’t too much figure showing. It is the contrast of the colors that make it work.

Gary: Thanks for the tutorial—I feel that you took me to a new level. Thanks again.

-- Maplewood, MN

Nice work, very sophisticated.

-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://amcraftsman.com

Nice looking pen.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

These are great. Can you show a picture if the glued up blanks before they are turned?

-- Bob A in NJ

OK!
I’ve taken a piece of padauk and made the jig and cut the maple and planed it to size.
I’ve cut the grooves in the order shown on the blog and glued in the pieces at the appropriate times so that somewhere inside the blank they must cross.
From the outside it looks like it will just spiral.
Tomorrow we turn!
(Tomorrow we start over?)
Why do you have a support on the left side?

Anticipation!

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.

SD,

”Why do you have a support on the left side?”

I presume that’s directed to me… I hadn’t mentioned it but this particular sled is also the sled
I use for making picture frames. It’s a perfect 90-degree sled with each fence at 45-degrees to the blade.
It’s also the jig I use when making mitered box lids for my finger-jointed boxes with mitered corner lids.

For pens, only one fence is necessary.

Make a fine jig once, do many things with it. ;-)

Gary

It was. But I thought you had also made a 70 degree sled. No big deal.

I turned my first celtic knot pen tonite. Learned a few things from my mistakes.
Like purpleheart, padauk will swell after it is drilled so you need to redrill it before you put the tube in.

Having screwed that up it was just a small matter to continue screwing up the pen. In the past I had never been overly concerned if the blank was not perfectly centered when it drilled it out. Well, when you have the celtic knot offcenter you get one small knot and one that is a LOT larger. It basically makes an ellipse out of the knot. This becomes precision woodworking.

I had made my sled at 60 degrees and, IMHO, that makes too long a knot. I’m thinking of making a jig to use on the bandsaw to cut really thin kerfs that I will fill with veneer. I’m also going to adjust this jig to 45 degrees.

This has become a fun and interesting project. Especially as I have to turn about 50 pens before Christmas.

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.