Cross Cut and Straight Cut Phesant Wood Bolt Action Pens

[Larryreitz]

In my previous post of Phesant wood pens It was suggested by George V (Robutacion) that a cross Grain would look good. Here is his comment:

"With this Pheasant wood, one of the things that impress me is the end-grain, regardless if the wood is a light or dark colour that end-grain layers layout is just stunning, unfortunately, the wood I get has the dimensions of 55x4x2cm but if I had/could get a piece/board 130mm wide and at least 21mm thick I would be cutting lots of cross-cut blanks and stabilise them for further strengthening, I may make a glue-up I doubt we would be able to see the joints, I will try and report.

Cheers
George "

So here is my attempt at gluing up and turning a normal blank I got from him. For comparison I am posting a normal straight cut blank on the same pen kit. While I think the glued up blank is nice I must agree that a one piece cross-cut blank would make a really nice pen. Maybe one day he'll be able to get some large enough to cut up.

Very interested in what you may think.
Larry

 

[Humongous]

I agree, the glue up is very nice but you lose the "Pheasant feather" look of the long grain.

 

[qquake]

I much prefer the straight one piece.

 

[Lucky2]

I prefer the straight grained also, I don't like seeing the glue-up lines being so eye-catching. Plus, for me, the glue-up is just to busy or something that I don't like.
But if you want a chuckle, hear I am checking out these two pen, which are very nicely shaped and finished. Now back to the story of my stupidity, I was checking out these two pens, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why a person would make a pen with a notch in the handle. Like the second looks to have, it took a good two to three minutes before I realized what was going on. It was or is the pen stand, that makes the pen look the way it does. I felt so stupid when I realized what it was.

Len

 

[qquake]

I did the same thing!

 

[tomas]

I like them all but I found the cross cuts the most interesting,

Tomas

 

[robutacion]

G'day Larry,

Thank you for playing with my suggestion, you did what you could with regular pen blank size and the results are exactly what I predicted if made that way, I still wish I had a piece wide enough to cut some cross-cut blanks of this wood, the look would be somehow different and depending on if the wood was light or dark colour but I still think the cross-cut "layers" look stunning.

The shapes and fit/finish are very good, congrats on your efforts and for sharing...!

Cheers
George