Goin' to the Chapel...

[GoodTurns]

Good friend getting married in a month...these are off to be engraved. White Holly (Bleached, thanks Frank) and B/W Ebony(thanks Tuba) with all the W carved off. Both on Jr. Statesmen kits.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Beautiful. A better picture would make it look even better.

 

[GaryMGg]

Jon,

PLEASE post another more detailed photo -- I'm real interested in seeing this close-up as I'll be doing wedding pens for my daughter's wedding soon.
Also, describe the bleach process you used as I own a large hunk of holly that's
not white enough. I won't be using it for her pen, but still want to make it white.

Thanks.

 

[GoodTurns]

didn't have the light tent set up, plus you can't see the depth in the ebony. I will try again after engraving!

I started with some very white holly (spacity/dwain coats EBAY)I bleached several times in a 25% bleach solution (overnight). I bleached the blanks while square, then turned to within about 1/8" of final size, bleached again due to several mineral stains and natural browns in the wood, turned and sanded to final size, then bleached again when the brown grain showed up in sanding. Final touch up sand (the bleach will loosen the top layer of wood) then finished CA (Fangars).

Lessons learned 1)save a little length on the blank ends. The bleach softens the fibers and will allow some discoloration on the tips, if I had 1/16th extra to sand off after turning/bleaching, the ends would look a lot better. 2) no matter how careful you are or how good the blank is, you're going to get some color in white holly!