I find that blank really interesting, and I'd like to know the process by which you made it.
It doesn't look as bad as you seem to think !!! . I'm with Chuck ... keep it !!
I don't have time to create a full tutorial right now, but I did take some pictures along the way.
1. create a "brick" with just one thin piece of wood sandwiched between two matching pieces (that can be done using three pen blanks by slicing the accent blank to the thickness of the diamond you want). Mark James has shown the bricks he makes for his world famous chevron pens - this is essentially the same thing.
2. Slice that blank at about 60 degrees to create small slices with a diamond in the middle. You can save some wood by having your initial glue up be at the angle you are planning on cutting, but I wanted to use some slices off the square end of this brick.
3. Glue the slices aligning the diamonds either horizontally or vertically.
The second picture uses the same slices but orients the diamond in the other direction. I should have used more diamonds for this orientation, it seems too short for my liking. I haven't put these on a blank as of yet.
4. Cut the glued up diamond parallel to the edges to create a thin strip of diamonds. I am using a Byrnes table saw so actually run my fingers pretty close to the blade for the first cut. I didn't take pictures of this, but if I put a tutorial in the library I will get one. For safety, after cutting one side I glued the two pieces of veneer and the solid wood to that side which gave me more material to work with when running through the saw.
5. From there it is just a matter of gluing end camps to the blank to get the right length and turning.
Hope this is enough info!
Credit for this goes to Mark James, who showed how to do the chevron blanks. If you look at his chevron work, each individual chevron is two diamond glued together. Credit also goes to Angela S, this
post of hers sparked the idea that diamonds were possible using her method.
