I occasionally turn a pen or two and I thought it would be nice to catalouge what I make. I’m not great at turning but I get the job done and I’m happy with the final result. This isn’t a complete list of every pen I’ve made but it’s close, I seem to recall I scrapped a pen early on that will have been unceremoniously thrown in the bin!
Oak and 24kt Gold Plated European Style Twist Pen
Made in December 2023. I decided to try something different with this pen and turn the grain the wrong direction e.g. the long grain runs across the pen rather than along it’s length. This can often provide a pleasing shimmer (chatoyancy) in the finished piece. The effect is not super pronounced in oal but it’s enough to make this worth a go. The problem with turning across the grain is the wood is very fragile and I found this out the hard way when part of the blank peeled away from the barrel. Fortunatly I was able to find the section that came off in the mess and glue it back on. The repair is nearly invisible and I think unless you knew it was there you’d never find it.
This was a time consuming pen to turn as I didn’t have the bushings for it so I had to measure the parts and turn to the dimensions of those. It was doubly time consuming because the central band is glued to rebated area of the top half of the pen rather than being loose on the twist mechanism. The finish is cyanoacrylate pollished to 12000 grit. The kit used was a CraftProKits 210097 (RZ-BP9#-G).
Red and Black Resin Sovereign Twist Pen in Satin Gold
This is my first resin (or plastic, I’m not completely sure) pen and I have to say it’s possibly my favourite to date. The blank let off the most awful plastic smell while it was being worked. It had to be turned to almost perfect size as sanding was very hard going. I usually turn to maybe 0.5mm over on the diamemter which with 80 grit can be sanded down in the blink of an eye when using wood, with the resin though it took 10 minutes or more. Sanding though the grits was quite easy and an excellent finish was achieved at 12000 grit. The resin really popped with the last few grits which I was quite surprised bay as it was looking good around 4000 gritt. The kit used was a CraftProKits 200353 (RZ-BP3#-SG).