What blanks look best with antique brass?

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ossaguy

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I really like that finish,and bought a couple of kits.Ant opinions on what wood or color of blank looks best?


Thanks for any thoughts!




Steve
 
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ossaguy

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I personally like Bethlehem Olive Wood with antique Brass hardware.[/quote]



Thanks for that suggestion,I forgot how nice that wood is.

So I just ordered 10 highly figured blanks,I hope they look as good in person as in the picture.

I love the smell of that wood!

Steve
 

Skie_M

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Antique Brass should go fairly well with most two-tone woods like Bethlehem Olivewood and Cocobolo.

I find that it also goes well with Deer Antler too, with my Deer Hunter Bolt Action pens in Antique Brass. Anything cream colored to golden brown would be nice. It can also look good in black, if you've got water buffalo horn or a nice ebony to show off.

Personally, I'ld stay away from most of the primary colors, but I ended up making an order that included some Emerald Green Silk in a 30-cal bolt action pen and it looked really nice. If you have a gold tinted acrylic that should blend in fairly well.
 

WriteON

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Aside from wood.... I like acrylic blanks in gold, copper, bronze, black/browns with brass kits. The second from the right is black/white ebony.
 

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Edgar

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Here's a few pens made from mesquite root. The root wood is a much deeper red than the wood from a mesquite branch or trunk, and it also has varying traces of black which adds character.

I tried a few of these blanks on antique brass & chrome and I really like the way the antique brass pens turned out.
 

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Edgar

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Mesquite root, eh? Sounds like I'll have to go back out into that field and dig up some root wood ... :)

Definitely! Sometimes the nicest wood is found in the butt area of a trunk - just at and slightly above & below ground level and in the roots. I think most any dark and highly figured root/butt wood would look good on an antique brass pen.

For some fun reading, check out some of George Valentine's (robutacion) adventures in collecting such wood. Here's one of my favorites:
http://www.penturners.org/forum/f14/look-what-i-found-land-oz-69309/
 

Skie_M

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I still need to get around to getting me a sawmill ... or building my own.


Not a big one, you understand ... one of those portable types I can pack in the trunk of my car and take out to the field! :)


I have a battery powered chainsaw (which I used to cut down that mesquite tree and cut it into sections), but I have nothing to use to "slab" it with in order to mill the wood into something more manageable. At the moment, I'm limited to cutting off a section of branch that has some nice red in the middle, and turning away all the loose bark and cream colored sapwood on the outside, and hoping that there's enough of that nice strong red in the middle for a full blank.

Beyond that, I can (and have) used a hatchet to split a larger log into quarters and then turned some blanks out of the middle sections, but it's rough going .... termites put some holes through the heartwood.

I didn't go after a life tree ... just one that had been dead for some time and dried out. No need for me to dry or season it. :)
 

Edgar

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I still need to get around to getting me a sawmill ... or building my own.


Not a big one, you understand ... one of those portable types I can pack in the trunk of my car and take out to the field! :)


I have a battery powered chainsaw (which I used to cut down that mesquite tree and cut it into sections), but I have nothing to use to "slab" it with in order to mill the wood into something more manageable. At the moment, I'm limited to cutting off a section of branch that has some nice red in the middle, and turning away all the loose bark and cream colored sapwood on the outside, and hoping that there's enough of that nice strong red in the middle for a full blank.

Beyond that, I can (and have) used a hatchet to split a larger log into quarters and then turned some blanks out of the middle sections, but it's rough going .... termites put some holes through the heartwood.

I didn't go after a life tree ... just one that had been dead for some time and dried out. No need for me to dry or season it. :)

We are starting to stray away from the OP topic, so I will start a new thread in the Casual Conversation forum to continue discussion on milling wood. It's certainly worthy of further conversation.
 

WriteON

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Cosmic Bronze. Must be seen close up. Looks more cosmic silver than bronze in the picture. The Pen is a gift to a friends young daughter that loves horseback riding.
 

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