I decided to make a turquoise inlay pen as a birthday present for my mom. She makes stone jewelry for one of her friends (who has sold jewelry at craft shows for many years). She likes the stones, so I figured turquoise would be the ticket. When I first started with pens I made her a slimline that is actually kinda crumby by my current standards, but she always talks about different people that comment about how nice it is. She likes the size of the slimline, so when I came across the Southwest Mesa I knew it was just right. The wood is rose gum burl that I knew had a bit of internal cracking and checking. I turned down to about 0.015 proud and then filled with crushed turquoise and soaked in thin CA. If I was to do it again I would use a Dremel to clean out the cracks to make them easier to fill and more uniform. Also the epoxy that I used to glue the tube ended up filling some of the voids and showing the tube, but lucky the kit is brass colored so it doesn't look too bad. Even with the rookie mistakes, I like the result. All C&C welcome.