True to his word, our Wizard from OZ, George, sent me an envelope full of the weird and wonderful from "Bits O' Timber" to try and test. One of the pieces appeared to be a small seed pod embedded in a beautiful aqua colored resin. With a concern for shredding and tearing, I worked up a design for a Pen State Southwest Mesa pen. Sumpin' simple...like me. I cut some banding materials for the ends as well as several subtle metallic bands as separators and a central splitter. The piece turned with few problems, probably because I stopped and sharpened six or seven times. I also took the precaution of soaking the piece several times with thin CA each time the cut showed raw material. Kind of stabilizing on the fly. And...Taa Daa, you see the result. Much of it is what I hoped for. I do feel that I could have gone much stronger on the central "splitter" band in one of several different ways. Of course, by shying to the timid, I will never know if it would have been an improvement...or just too much for a very busy blank. One more time where I feel that I missed a chance by being too conservative in my vision. So what do y'all think? Please leave your thoughts here on this thread for both me as craftsman, and for the generous and saintly George at Bits O' Timber, regarding the material. We both value your opinions and support.
Testy exotic test piece tested
- Thread starter bpgoldo
- Start date
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Jim15
Member
That's awesome.
kruzzer
Member
that look great.. very eye catching
mark james
IAP Collection, Curator
Beautiful artistry! I love the blank and the end segments.
The end caps are a bit busy with this kit (for me), and I have never had long-term good luck with the PSI kits. (Look nice, initially fit together OK, 3-5 months later - not so good).
I do love how you embellish your blanks (George's or otherwise) with some wonderful subtle segments. You are a very gifted turner!
Have FUN!
The end caps are a bit busy with this kit (for me), and I have never had long-term good luck with the PSI kits. (Look nice, initially fit together OK, 3-5 months later - not so good).
I do love how you embellish your blanks (George's or otherwise) with some wonderful subtle segments. You are a very gifted turner!
Have FUN!
robutacion
Member
I agreed with James 100%, you have a very unique way to created these type of segments in the pen blanks, congrats.
Those type of blanks were very popular when I first started making them, in fact, I started using that Dwarf Banksia pod in quarters there is, I would slice a pod into 4 equal parts and cast each part individually. The blanks come out beautifully but I wasn't happy with the fact that the pen barrel would look different as it was rotated, one half would show the pod beautifully but the other half not as good, as it is easy to understand why so, I decided to use a full pod and therefore make the blank to look identical all around but that would mean that, 1 pod would only make 1 blank instead of for as before.
That was a problem in the beginning because I only had a small amount of pods to use and not other trees where I could collect some more but that has changed and I started to utilise not only the longer pods (5" and longer) to create a single Resifill but I also started making the same blanks with 2 smaller pods and that did increase the usable amount of pods from a single tree/brush.
The last blanks I made, have been very slow sellers so I stop making them as regularly however, there is one IAP members that once was very active in here Mr. Sean George from Australia he was the person to whom I sold the most number of these blanks, so much so that even tough not active here, he still makes pens and one of his best sellers are these Dwarf Banksia blanks, that he asks me to produce every so often, the colour that he likes the most are the violet/purple, quite recently (a few weeks ago) he ordered 2 lots of about 40 each of these blanks (see attached), all cast in the violet, some are 1" square for some bigger pens that he makes, with a little more meat to work with (sometimes not possible).
The blank you worked on was cast with the Pearlex Blue-Sky, one of the best colours, in my view.
Let's see what you will come out with, next...!:wink::biggrin:
Cheers
George
Those type of blanks were very popular when I first started making them, in fact, I started using that Dwarf Banksia pod in quarters there is, I would slice a pod into 4 equal parts and cast each part individually. The blanks come out beautifully but I wasn't happy with the fact that the pen barrel would look different as it was rotated, one half would show the pod beautifully but the other half not as good, as it is easy to understand why so, I decided to use a full pod and therefore make the blank to look identical all around but that would mean that, 1 pod would only make 1 blank instead of for as before.
That was a problem in the beginning because I only had a small amount of pods to use and not other trees where I could collect some more but that has changed and I started to utilise not only the longer pods (5" and longer) to create a single Resifill but I also started making the same blanks with 2 smaller pods and that did increase the usable amount of pods from a single tree/brush.
The last blanks I made, have been very slow sellers so I stop making them as regularly however, there is one IAP members that once was very active in here Mr. Sean George from Australia he was the person to whom I sold the most number of these blanks, so much so that even tough not active here, he still makes pens and one of his best sellers are these Dwarf Banksia blanks, that he asks me to produce every so often, the colour that he likes the most are the violet/purple, quite recently (a few weeks ago) he ordered 2 lots of about 40 each of these blanks (see attached), all cast in the violet, some are 1" square for some bigger pens that he makes, with a little more meat to work with (sometimes not possible).
The blank you worked on was cast with the Pearlex Blue-Sky, one of the best colours, in my view.
Let's see what you will come out with, next...!:wink::biggrin:
Cheers
George
