I have been making pens to give to all the members of my family.  Here is the starting pile of blanks with one example.

The blanks were glued up from mesquite and kauri.   Click on the image if you want a better view.

Kauri is pretty nifty wood.  If the end grain is exposed on the side when turning, it will brighten and darken to your eye as you rotate the pen in the sun.    Very pretty, but this wood is a softwood so working endgrain is rough.   The tree this wood came from, fell into a salt bog 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and my source for this wood has dried up.  So if there is a flaw in the wood, I work around it and incorporate it into the design.  I have had quite a few failures and destroyed a lot of precious wood on the way to making these and learning how to work this wood to it’s best advantage.

Here they are with about half of them made.  Click on the image to get a better view, if you are so inclined!

Now that I have a feel for the wood, and know how to work it, I have, of course, ran out of it.   In any case, this wood is a bit more pricy than I can usually afford, so I doubt I will have much more occasion to use it.  Still it fun to use a wood that grew before what we would recognize as a man, walked this earth.

Continue reading Turning Pens for Christmas