I haven’t done a lot of “commercial” sales of pens and pencils yet, but my work has been noticed by a growing number of people through word-of-mouth. I have been thinking about just how much I would like to do in the “business” of penturning, or wood turning in general, and I have honestly decidied that I have no desire to make this a commercially successful enterprise. I faced a similar issue with my stained glass a few years ago. While I thought (and think) that I have the talent to make money at these crafts, I just don’t know if I will still feel that way after making a production order of 50 of the same pen with a deadline looming.
At any rate, I did recieve an order for a slimline pen and pencil set from Kate and Christopher in the parish and am glad to do it.
These slimline kits came from William Wood-Write in Ontario and are somewhat different than the Slimlines that are sold at Lee-Valley. But a rose by any other name…
The slimline is the basic woodturners’ pen kit but perhaps the most difficult in terms of tolerances and the potential for mishap. The 7mm tube and the bushings leave less that 1/32 an inch of wood at the kit connections. To make a really smooth transition is difficult.
These slimlines turned out rather well though. After exploding a blank on my Compound Mitre Saw last week, and an emergency order for new blanks from Ontario, these kits were completed uneventfully. They are in Tulipwood with a Purpleheart knot inlay. People have been calling this design a “celtic” knot, but to me it looks more like a turk’s head knot that I make in decorative nautical ropework. Either way, I used 1/8 inch stock for the inlay, but had to sand it down because my saw kerf is not quite 1/8. The trick in getting the “rope” to line up is to not cut through the blank entirely on each cut and then slide the inlay into the kerf groove.
As the wall thickness is turned down, the knot appears. The larger you can leave this, the bigger the gaps between the ropes. With the slimline though, because I had to turn the pen down quite finely, the ropes tended to merge with the others. Normally with the slimline, I would like to have a less bulbous bottom of the pen, but was hesitant to turn any more off for fear the know would just turn into a blob.
Finished with CA, these pens turned out well.
Finally, I published a video to YouTube as well.
To Everything, Turn...Turn...Turn 