A pair of cross cut Spalted Hickory pens

I received a box of hickory in trade to a fellow pen turner. At first I was a bit concerned over the cross cut spalted wood but decided to give it a go without sending them off to be stabalized.

The first pen I went very slow with a scraper (EWT 2R carbide tip) and just eased it down to shape. As I got closer, I stopped the lathe and was shocked to see the brass tube where the rot of the spalting used to be. I drenched the blank in thin CA and packed the open areas with lathe shavings and more thin CA. Once that set, I turned it down to final shape. To fill the last of the gaps I put thin CA on 120 grit paper and wet sanded with the CA. Then a final scraping with a skew and sanded to finished size. Several coats of thin CA and BLO followed by my standard medium CA and BLO to finish it off. I was happy enough with the results to send that pen off as my PITH trade for the IAP.

The 2nd pen started out much the same but had a large section of sap wood that was too soft to last. It blew out completely taking 2/3 of the blank with it. I cut it down to the brass and left a good 1/2” section of the original blank in place. Then I added a thin strip of mahogany for contrast and segmented on a cut off section of silver maple I’d had in my scraps. After turning it down and finishing it out I realized that flipping the lower blank really brought out the character of the pen so that’s the way it was assembled. I’m thrilled with this one and can’t wait to turn more of this box of wood to see what reveals itself.

-- Carl Fisher, Fort Mill, South Carolina --