Thanks guys! These pens will probably eventually find their way onto my site for sale. Now that I've hit upon a good formula for size and construction, I can pretty much make these out of anything. I'm really happy you guys like them - it makes all my experimentation worth it!
Lovely pens Kurt and they look good either way.
I guess you turn a lot of ebonite for your pipe stems so how about something in red and black next time.
regards, Bill
I do have some of the One True Cumberland, but since it's very expensive, I tend to reserve it for special projects - like the pen I made my brother-in-law for Christmas (Jr Gent RB w/ gold). It's also only 16mm, so it's not quite large enough for capped pens outside of Jr Gent sized stuff. I had thought about getting some of the swirled rods from SEM, but they're very expensive, and for the price of one rod of swirls that I would only use on pens, I can get two rods of plain black that I can use on pens *and* pipes.
That said, there's tons of materials out there. In fact, I've been drooling over some of the stuff at Exotic Blanks. Some of that is just phenomenal looking - for both pens and pipes. I've been using the same stuff as in their alternatives series, but from a different supplier. Unfortunately, that supplier only has them in 1" or 1.5", and I end up wasting a ton of material as lathe swarf. Some of those I would order entire rods of, just to be sure I could cut it to exactly the size I need with minimal waste.
