My PITH to Plantman...a nod to Landon

[Brooks803]

Here's what I ended up making Jim for the Dec. PITH. This was a particularly special PITH bc it was in honor of our friend Landon Smith (Hunter-27). With the theme being Construction bc who can forget Landon's PINE Pith! So I decided to do a nod to Landon and make my first Sharpie out of....you guessed it...PINE! Making this was very nostalgic for me because it also reminded me of my time with my Grandfather. When I was a little kid I would spend every single weekend with him. We'd spend most of our time his woodshop and I'd be his helper. That shop always smelled like fresh cut pine. My Grandfather is also the reason I looked into woodworking 5 years ago and how I got into pens.

By some miracle I was able to turn this fairly thin and even thread it! It's also a snap cap so there's no risk of breaking external threads. I wanted to keep the aromatics of the pine in tact so I didn't use a CA finish. Instead I applied a couple of coats of Tru-Oil to the inside and the outside for protection and strength.










Now on top of doing a pen PITH we also had to make and send a Christmas ornament. Since I didn't cast anything for the pen I wanted to cast something for the ornament (I gotta have resin in there somewhere!). My plan was to use my scroll chuck and turn it on the lathe, but when the time came my scroll chuck decided it want to work so I had to do it all by hand. I did the rough shape on my disc sander (and you can still see that it's not perfectly circular :redface and then finished it by hand. The work was rewarding and in the end I was happy with the end result. Thankfully Jim agrees with that! :biggrin:






Thanks for looking!

 

[GaryMGg]

Nice work.
Some of my favorite pens are pine--old growth heart pine or fatlighter SYP.

 

[Dale Allen]

Both are amazing and beautiful works of art.
I was intrigued with the grain pattern on the pine.
At first it looked like a capped end but then the next photo says, no way!
Also, the ornament looks like something blew up inside.

 

[Jim15]

Beautiful work.

 

[robutacion]

Great job, you done on that pen...!

Nothing compares the smell of fresh cut Pine and its natural resin smells, I'm a sucker for it as you all well know so, I always find a way to make something out of strong scented Pine, something that I have plenty of, around me, as I had when I was a kid...!

And some people ask me, "why did you come to this area...???" isn't that obvious...!!!:wink::biggrin:

That pendant cast reminds me of a chilly sauce my mum used to make...! very nice.:wink:

Cheers
George

 

[1080Wayne]

Beautiful pen Jonathon from a plain piece of pine . Never would have thought it would be possible to thread it though . Hope the snap cap doesnt put too much stress on the wood and cause the cap to split .

 

[ossaguy]

Beautiful work,love how the grains match up so perfectly!

I'm truly amazed that you have excelled so far in pen making in just 5 years. Wow!

I too love the smell of pine,and it's something how in an instant,that smell can transport you back in time to a certain sweet memory.



Steve

 

[robutacion]

Beautiful work,love how the grains match up so perfectly!

I'm truly amazed that you have excelled so far in pen making in just 5 years. Wow!

I too love the smell of pine,and it's something how in an instant,that smell can transport you back in time to a certain sweet memory.



Steve

Hi Steve,

Is most interesting, the sentiment you put on your last paragraph , I wonder why the Pine scent always seem to take you back in time, what was in the paste that imprinted the Pine smell so deep in our life's...???

In my case, I was born in a little town in Portugal that had a Pine resin tar distillery, the famous coastal Pine forests planted in the 1,300th's plus millions of Pine trees planted all around from where the resin was extracted from, was my initiation.

My playground were Pine forests (here)and my toys were little floating boasts carved from Pine bark, using a pocket knife that was at the time, a normal thing to carry in your pocket.

What was yours...?

Cheers
George

 

[BSea]

That sure doesn't look like HD pine. That is beautiful! Great job on the snap cap.

 

[mlconnelly]

Beautiful pen and great ornament Jonathon!

 

[lwalper]

First off, what is PITH? Closest I can come is an acronym for "pen in the hand" -- maybe it is worth more than two in the bush.

 

[Brooks803]

Beautiful pen Jonathon from a plain piece of pine . Never would have thought it would be possible to thread it though . Hope the snap cap doesnt put too much stress on the wood and cause the cap to split .

Thanks Wayne! Only time will tell on how well it holds up. Especially if it's well used. The snap cap part shouldn't put any pressure at all on the cap itself. On the refill there's a tiny cap that I drilled a small hole for and glued it in place. Plus when you close the pen there's no contact between the cap and body itself. There's a little cushion of air that pushes back when you go to cap it. So that helps relieve the force. As for threading it, I cheated a little bit. I over drilled for the tap so it would only leave a very shallow channel. I then filled those channels with epoxy and built up a thin layer. After it cured for a day I chased the threads to make them full depth. To test them out I used the refill itself as a make shift mandrel and turned the body like that. They held tight so I'm not worried about them.

Beautiful work,love how the grains match up so perfectly!

I'm truly amazed that you have excelled so far in pen making in just 5 years. Wow!

I too love the smell of pine,and it's something how in an instant,that smell can transport you back in time to a certain sweet memory.



Steve

Thanks Steve! Luckily since there are no threads in the cap you can spin it around while capped to line up the grain every time :wink::biggrin:

It's crazy huh? To think I never even knew how to turn on a lathe let alone turn something 5yrs ago to where I am today. One of the many reasons why IAP is such a wonderful place. I've been a member since the 1st day I turned on that lathe.

That sure doesn't look like HD pine. That is beautiful! Great job on the snap cap.

Thanks Bob! I'm not sure where the pine came from originally. I made a new friend that was needing help working with a historic piece of timber (The Senator Tree down in FL) and he brought over a huge box of wood for me to pick through. The timing was perfect bc I was just thinking of my PITH design when I saw the pine. My first idea was to take a sketch pencil and instead of turn it like normal was to make it supersized and use a router to shape it like a contractors pencil. Long and flat. But then my tap came in the mail :biggrin:

First off, what is PITH? Closest I can come is an acronym for "pen in the hand" -- maybe it is worth more than two in the bush.

That's pretty close. It stands for Pen In The Hat. Every so often someone will host a PITH and members will sign up to be randomly paired together to make each other a pen following a central theme. Here's the link to this past one: Dec PITH. If you check the activities forum from time to time you'll come across the sign ups.

 

[lwalper]

If you check the activities forum from time to time you'll come across the sign ups.

OK, thanks, I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[D.Oliver]

Excellent job Jonathon. I really like that you thought of Landon too.

 

[Brooks803]

Excellent job Jonathon. I really like that you thought of Landon too.

Thanks Derek. I do think of Landon and his family quite often. Several PITH's ago I did a swap with Landon as well as his son. I keep both on my desk and use them often.