Olive Burl Sierra

[Bree]

I had some Olive Burl wood that I bought and I wanted to try it out so I picked a nice piece and took a Black Titanium-Rhodium Sierra kit and went to work. Well the blank looked great to first inspection but once I got it to cylinder the thing was riddled with cracks and voids inside. So...

Field stabilization was called for! I got sawdust in where I could and began drizzling thin CA into every crack. As I turned deeper into the wood more cracks appeared and more CA was used to keep the blank together.

I finally got it to where I wanted it and hit the whole blank with CA before starting to sand. I figured that since the blank was already heavily CA'ed I might as well try a CA finish on it. So I started with a brew of tung oil that I had made up a couple of days earlier.

I blended 50% pure tung oil with 50% mineral spirits and 1/2 ml of Japan Drier and let that cook for a couple of days. So I applied the tung oil mixture and then started the CA/BLO prodecure but used tung instead of BLO. It worked out fairly well and I put several layers on and sanded her up to 12,000 MM and Ren waxed her.

And here she is...

Never a dull moment!! LOL!
:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

 

[Rick_G]

Came out looking great in the end. What more can we ask for.

 

[maxman400]

Great Job Bree!

 

[tim self]

Very nice pen. beautiful wood and finish

 

[ldb2000]

Beautiful pen Bree . That BOW burl is fantastic and your fit and finish are spot on .

 

[rjwolfe3]

Very nice!

 

[Bree]

Do you guys or your customers find the cracks to be annoying? When they get CA'ed they end up as dark lines which show up pretty prominently in a light colored wood like this. There are a bunch more under the clip (as you would expect!).

I really like the Black Titanium/Rhodium kit though it is very hard to photograph properly. It is the cracks that bother me. I have a number of these blanks and the others will almost certainly show these same kind of cracks requiring the same kind of stabilization.

 

[akbar24601]

That turned out beautifully Bree! Looks like all of your hard work paid off.

 

[altaciii]

A really nice blank with some great repairs give the pen some its own identity and charactor. To some people it makes it thrir own. Great job on the save. beautiful pen.

 

[markgum]

That is a purdy pen.
Great job

 

[desertyellow]

Great recovery.
Totally worth it.