About corn cob pens.

[DAVIDMANUEL]

First me: I'm in México, and there is very few penturners. I haven't meet any yet, even by internet.
This is bad to make penturnig friends, but good for to sale pens. For everybody my pens are very beauty and original and i make good sales.

I made a corn cob pen. It's nice, and in México everybody likes corn, and we eat corn (in several forms) all day. Also, ancient mexican mythologies tell us that men was made of corn. In fact corn start to grow in México 10,000 years ago.

BUT, I don't know why, my corn cobs are very hard, when i work with the rough they don't reduce their diameter, i spend about two hours working whit rough and skews until i can start to sand.

My best choice have been to work at maximum lathe speed

Is it normal? many people says that corn cobs are so soft, but for me are harden than stabilized woods.

some body knows what is happenig?

thanks.

 

[Ligget]

Welcome to the group, I prefer to turn down cobs with a very sharp round nose scraper.
Skew only to put the final finish cut on what the scraper already shaped.
You will find a lot of Mexican penturners in here thats for sure.[]

 

[Scott]

Welcome to the IAP!

You may just have very hard corn cobs. If so, you are probably already doing what you can to turn them.

But it is also likely that your corn cobs are really not any harder than anybody else's. The fibers that make up a corn cob are strong but flexible, and they bend when you try to cut them rather than shearing off cleanly. If this is the problem, you can help quite a bit by dousing the cob with some CA glue to stiffen the fibers, then they will shear off easier. Also you should be sure to use dry cobs.

Good luck! I hope this helps. We would love to see a picture of some of your pens.

Scott.