Ebony and Holly

[KenB259]

This is the same pen I posted yesterday. I'm liking it better today. Here are some better pictures. For whatever reason, I noticed the picture I previously posted looked like the top had a horrible finish. I promise you it's smooth and shiny Ebony is hard to photograph.

 

[PenCasso]

This is the same pen I posted yesterday. I'm liking it better today. Here are some better pictures. For whatever reason, I noticed the picture I previously posted looked like the top had a horrible finish. I promise you it's smooth and shiny Ebony is hard to photograph.

Very beautiful pen! Nice work!

 

[KenB259]

My goodness, even looking at some of these pictures, I swear I see cracks, but there are no cracks on the pen.

 

[leehljp]

Beautiful and skilled work!

 

[jrista]

I like it! Nice work!!

Ken, I don't know if you have stabilization equipment. If you do, it might be worth stabilizing the holly next time you try segmenting holly with darker or colored woods. This should fill all the air within the cells with resin, greatly minimizing or eliminating the possibility of sanding dust ending up in the fibers. I've turned a number of stabilized segmented blanks I picked up off a seller on Etsy. They had soft maple, resins with honeycomb mesh, and some other brightly colored or dark wood. I was afraid about sanding them at first (and at the time I had ZERO skew skill), but in the end the soft maple didn't pick up any of the colors of the other woods or resins. This is what's had me wondering if stabilization is a way to make it easier to turn and finish light and dark/colored segmented blanks without the need for high skew skills.