Experimentation

[bloggstein]

This was a twist slimline kit. I decided I'd try doing an ebony center band for it. The band started out ok, but I had terrible luck with blowouts on the figure at the end of the pen. Eventually, I got frustrated enough with it that I gave up trying to fix it, and decided to try a completely different form than I'd done before. This is the result:

The accents are curly maple and gaboon ebony, and the primary wood is figured ash (I believe, but could be wrong).

I'd definitely like any comments on the form. I know the wood matching and finish is lacking, and I originally thought the form was a throwaway as well, but after looking at it over the weekend, I've decided maybe it wasn't quite as bad as I had thought.

 

[alamocdc]

The twist joint looks tight and that's one of the hardest things about doing this style. "Wood matching" isn't so critical in a design like this as long as none of the species "clash" in color, or more or less open grain than the other species. This doesn't appear to clash to me, except maybe the Maple at the finial. Keep trying with stuff like this. They tend to be some of my best sellers.

 

[pete00]

I like it, nice and clean looking, good job.

One suggestion, if you going to put a book in the picture turn it the other way so i can read the title, had to turn monitor upside down to read...[][][]

 

[dfurlano]

Nice looking pen.

 

[gerryr]

I think you did a good job on this. If you try this again, you might want to consider a wood finial. With a wood finial, your only constraint is the ID of the tube. The tenon on the wood finial can be a bit loose in the tube since they generally need to be glued in anyway.

 

[bloggstein]

Thanks. I had thought about doing an ebony finial, but wasn't really liking the pen shape much by that time, so I didn't bother. I was thinking of having the finial start out just slightly larger than the pen diameter, and flare out a bit with a rounded cap. I've been using this pen for the last couple days, and I'm actually really starting to like the shape. I think I'll have to make another one and do a custom finial on it.