maxman400
Member
A friend of mine was talking to me about two months ago when the last issue of Pen World came out and I was telling him about a Mammoth Tooth pen I saw in there. Well he informed me that he had two Mammoth Tooth knife scales that he had bought and had not used them for a knife that he was restoring, and asked me if I could make him a Pen instead. I told him that I would be willing to try anything once, but not to be in a hurry because I would have to take my time. So he brought me the scales and the first thing noticed was that they were very brittle and had cracks all over them and the were very hard. the first thing I did was epoxy them to a piece of black diamond wood for a backing to stabilize them. I used a metal cutting band saw to split one of them in two then used a piece of blue diamond wood as an accent to join them together to make a blank. I then encased the blank with strips of maple and epoxy to give it support during drilling, I even capped the ends with wood. I drilled the blank 1/64" at a time starting with a 1/4", the cap took 14 steps and body took 12 steps. I had to use carbide tipped tools to turn it, I got a few flakes but mostly it came off like powder. I started sanding at 320, then 400, 500 and 600 then buffed for the final finish. During turning I soaked it three times with thin CA because I found some small voids in the tooth. I gave it to my friend today and he was overwhelmed with the way it turned out. This is the toughest and hardest stuff I have ever tried to turn to date. Oh yea he said I could keep the other scale for me. :biggrin:
Thanks for looking, comments welcome.
Thanks for looking, comments welcome.
