Is there a need.

I think the spalted wood would fall in the same class as the exotic wood in the sense that its unique, different and stands out from your avg wood.

If you have extra blanks I would try listing them on ebay.

-- Dan - "Collector of Hand Planes"

Joey,

there is no problem in having a ton of pen blanks on hand. And if you don’t want to sell them on your site, offer them here or even on Ebay. You can dump a lot of blanks on ebay selling in 5-packs or 10-packs, and make a decent bit of money back from them too.

For instance, I had a pair of cedar trees get knocked over by a massive oak that fell at my grandmother’s house a few years back. I cut the oak up for firewood for her (I dislike building with oak) and cut the cedar up into pen blanks, both tree2. I ended up with about 450 cedar pen blanks 6” long and nearly 7/8” square.

I was selling 5-packs on ebay for an average of $8, plus shipping. I only kept 50 for myself, and I think that’s plenty for cedar.

So, 80 sets of pen blanks at $8 a pop is $640. It took me an entire day to cut up the trees and blank them. I still think I did OK for a days work and a little time packing them up and shipping them out.

Is there a true need? The market will decide that, and that sways from time to time. I see a lot of domestic woods listed around places, especially turning blanks. I think many people are tired of the exotics and are realizing there is great beauty in our own woods. And it doesn’t clear-cut rain forest to provide it either.

Would I sell it? You bet. If you list it, they will come.

-- Kenny