I struggled for awhile getting a good photograph of this pen. You have to hold it in the sun just right to really be able to see all the curl (those beautiful wavy, luminescent lines). Even now I'm not completely satisfied with the photograph - pictures just don't seem to do it justice!
I made this pen several weeks ago while working with my dad in the shop. He is a novice woodworker and mostly does work building boxes and small foot stools. As a result he has a TON of scrap wood - the perfect size for pen turning! And this little beauty was sitting in the box with a few other pieces of walnut. I have not yet been able to turn the remaining pieces, but I hope to do so sometime this week.
Anyways, it was pretty easy to turn. The hardest part was getting that darn hole in the center for the pen components (the ink and the twist mechanism) to fit. This was my first pen that I would be crafting all the way through - all the previous pens had been pre-drilled and pre-cut to size. We attempted to rig up his drill press in a way that would give us as straight of a hole as possible - but the limits of his drill press made this a real issue. I almost thought I wasn't going to be able to make anything out of the blank because of how wide the hole was, and how badly off center.
But some quick thinking on my part filled the extra space in the middle (we rolled the brass tubes in a slurry of sawdust and super glue before inserting them into the blanks). And very careful chiseling rounded the blank off nicely, leaving plenty of wood for my pen.
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