Wow! I am blown away. A colleague of mine gave me some slices of trees that he had in his Quonset. These had been there for several years and he was wondering if I could use them. They happened to be about an inch thick, so they were perfect for pen blanks. I cut one up and started making a Baron Rollerball for my colleague to thank him for the gift. The wood is called Desert Ironwood (Olneya tesota). It has a Janka Hardness of 3260 lbf. In comparison to African Ebony or Gaboon Ebony, which till now has been the hardest wood that I have turned, it is slightly less at 3080 lbf. This particular ironwood came from the southwestern United States.
Now, I have learned to always wear a respirator when turning wood, especially an unfamiliar one. It was a good instinct, because Of the smell of the wood and because I had a mild contact allergy to the wood. The wood smells like burning tobacco which I don’t care for. In addition, my arms broke out in hives for a couple of days. This was a small price to pay though for the extraordinarily beautiful product. Even with my roughing gouge, the pen almost didn’t need sanding, although I did sand it. I had to use CA for this pen because a very fine crack exposed itself in the pen cap and I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t break during normal use. I think I will do more and hopefully leave one unfinished. Sanded only to 600 leaves a lovely satin finish that is lovely to touch.
Turning a wood this hard was a challenge. In just this single pen, I had to sharpen my gouges once in the middle of the turn. That is rarely required in a pen because it is such a small project. Sharpening is important though with this wood.
When I did the CA finish, the bushings got glued to the blank. This is very common, and so I had developed a technique of taking my parting tool and carefully cutting the join between the bushing and the blank. I must be out of practice though because when I tapped the bushing off, a big chunk of the CA finish on both top and bottom broke off. So, I finally broke down and bought some UHMW Plastic Rod to make some finishing bushings. UHMW stands for Ultra High Molecular Weight plastic and it doesn’t stick to CA. The other option is HDPE which stands for High Density Polyethylene. According to the plastic supplier where I got my UHMW, they are the same thing, but it appears that according to the google, they are a bit different. At any rate, I had to take down the first CA finish from my pen and then redo it with the plastic bushings. They worked better, but I will play with shape in the future (more about the drawbacks of plastic in future posts).
This morning I got the pen finished and assembled. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. The light coloured wood in the cap is sapwood. I am looking forward to making more pens with this wonderful gift. The pictures are of the finished pen. The slice of wood is one of the pieces of Ironwood.
To Everything, Turn...Turn...Turn 