JimGo
Member
This is only the third pen, or anything else for that matter, that I've made. My original lathe broke, and I finally had the time and good weather to be able to get out and play again this weekend (I live in an apartment, and don't want to turn indoors). I have had trouble with the pre-drilled rosewood blanks from PSI splitting, and read somewhere on here about using the skew chisel instead of the gouge from start to finish. I found that, after a little practice, I was able to turn the blanks almost all the way down, but was apparently getting overly ambitious as I got close to the brass tube in some cases. I decided to try something different on this pen, trying to keep more wood on the blank, thus hopefully avoiding the blank splitting. Seems to have worked well, and my wife has asked if she can trade one of the original pens I made (which were gifts to her) for this one. I'm still debating! 
