I have been refining my method on making these and I figured I'd share a few tips that have helped with my precision. Precision is key on these. Anywhere you are not precise ,will result in a gap. The initial squares need to all be the exact same thickness and they need to be exactly square. Rectangles will not work. Wherever you glue the pieces together, they need to be flush, any step you have, will result in a gap. I get the best results by gluing the layers together one at a time and if you're clamping, you need to be very careful. Clamping also needs to be exact as it's very easy to have pressure more to one side than the other resulting in, you guessed it, a gap. These work best if you cut the squares so the grain runs with the short dimension, like you'd get if you were just slicing off a pen blank, this gets you away from end grain. End grain ones are horrible to turn, nothing but tear out. I had some success with negative rake cutters, but personally, I'll never make end grain ones again. Adding spacer material can be tricky but once figured out it's not hard to do. The spacer material does add to the tear out issue though. My personal taste is if using multiple woods, with varying color, spacer material is not needed. If you're doing all one color or wood, then spacer material is very much needed. Adding spacer material adds a lot of time to making the blank. These are not an economical blank to make, there's a lot of waste and you end up with a massive blank, pretty much dictated by the thickness of your boards or blanks. All in all, they are fun to make and if you stay away from end grain, they are not to bad to turn. Hopefully this will help some if anyone wants to give these a try. One more thing, if you're making these for a shorter barrel pen , you need to keep the little square thickness to around .150. The tutorials in the library are invaluable.
360° Herringbone Tips
- Thread starter KenB259
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leehljp
Member Liaison
Thanks Ken, for this post. There are lots of tips here, and your experiences have certainly come to fruition in your end product, and will most assuredly will help others. Thanks for the tip on the "endgrain" - avoid it.
I have not made a herringbone, but in seeing others in the past and putting my mind around it as best I could, I figured that it would take almost absolute PRECISE cutting and fitting all the way around. You did a whale of a job and an excellent writeup with the tips. THANK YOU!
I have not made a herringbone, but in seeing others in the past and putting my mind around it as best I could, I figured that it would take almost absolute PRECISE cutting and fitting all the way around. You did a whale of a job and an excellent writeup with the tips. THANK YOU!
jttheclockman
Member
Good points and I believe this too could be added to the library for info.
Every time I think about this design and others doing it I sure wish back in the day the info of how to make these with triangles was preserved and shared. It was so tabooed to share new designs but here we have a person willing to share as others have done on this design. One day when I get back into making pens again I am going to pursue that triangle theory.
Every time I think about this design and others doing it I sure wish back in the day the info of how to make these with triangles was preserved and shared. It was so tabooed to share new designs but here we have a person willing to share as others have done on this design. One day when I get back into making pens again I am going to pursue that triangle theory.
John, I did find this thread https://www.penturners.org/threads/herringbone-360-blank-and-instructions.52999/ showing this picture that looks like triangles, but I can't make out how to do it.
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jttheclockman
Member
Ken yes I have seen this and just about every thread that contained the word triangle in it.
Believe me I tried a few times contacting a few of the people that I still know are still around the site but to no avail. I have seen a pen made with them and what it does is makes the legs of each layer longer as opposed to being so bunched up. Back then telling the how to was a no no on this design. people were upset when the designed was revealed. I just never did understand that. This happened many times with a very well known and talented pen maker here named Eagle. He was way ahead of the curve when it came to designs. Many of the designs we see today are his. I have a couple photos of his pens I want to try to copy but going to take some thinking. He would give you clues at least and then tell you where you were making a mistake. I requested a few times a few people back then to just help me get started in PMs but they never got around to it. One day is all I can say. Gives me a goal.There was a post I made not long ago trying to seek out anyone with knowledge of this design but came up empty. I am hoping Don sees this and maybe he came up with some info.
https://www.penturners.org/threads/360-herringbone.177001/#post-2180985
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wood-of-1kind
Member
Thank you Ken for both the picture and tips offered. It really helps visually to see how the small pieces stack up
vertically. I tried back in 2009 to make this style of blank but came up short as my blank "exploded" when I tried
turning it to round it off. A lot of info from members such as you have shared technique info and have somewhat
removed the mystery of solving the 360 herringbone. Thank you again.
vertically. I tried back in 2009 to make this style of blank but came up short as my blank "exploded" when I tried
turning it to round it off. A lot of info from members such as you have shared technique info and have somewhat
removed the mystery of solving the 360 herringbone. Thank you again.
leehljp
Member Liaison
Off Topic: Belated Congratulations (2 weeks late) Peter for your 20 years on IAP!
John brings up memories of long ago. I vividly remember the times when methods were NOT shared, and even some who sold professionally would not post pictures of their pens for fear of others stealing their designs. And some companies did do that!
jttheclockman
Member
We have come a long way.