Some recent turnings

It’s been way too cold to do any real woodworking lately, so I figured I would get to turning. It only takes me about a half hour to make a simple lathe project, which is about the same amount of time it takes for my toes to go numb in a 20 degree garage.

I’ve done a ton of stuff recently and we’ve all seen a million pens before, but these came out pretty nice

The first one is a cigar pen with a Camel Thorn blank. I have never heard of or seen camel thorn before. I can’t say that I will ever be working with it again though. This was like turning rocks. I could actually see the bevel on my gouge blunting. To make it through this pen took 4 sharpenings. It doesn’t like to be drilled or reamed either. It sure is beautiful though:

The second picture is a rifle cartridge pen. I am not a fan of these but a lot of other people are. I think this one came out really cool. I decided to play with the beading parting tool a bit. The wood used is Katalox.

I tried turning a few razors. I really like the Bocote on this one:

The fourth image is of a teachers pen. The center is a Satine (boodwood) off cut from some cutting boards. It had a small knot so I cut around it. I wanted to see what it would look like turned. Personally this is the nicest piece of turned bloodwood I have seen. The ends are Mahogany. These are a nightmare to assemble.

The fifth image is a bolt action pen. The customer wanted an interesting, but traditional gunstock material for the blank. I decided to go with some marbled English walnut from Oregon Burls. I was not disappointed. Amazing stuff

The last picture is a slimline. I am generally not a big fan of slimlines, but for some reason I love the way this one came out. I think I got the tapers perfect (for my taste anyway). The stylus tip is cool, and I sure do love Chechen:

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