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JimGo

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This is a close-up of my first Cedar pen. Both halves split on me while I was turning them, but I glued them together. With a little sawdust in the gaps, it came out pretty good. It actually gives the pen some more character. If you've never turned cedar, it smells great, and it has some great figuring too.

Cedar.jpg
 
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Part of a random set of blanks I bought on eBay. Since I'm just starting out, I bought a bunch of stuff, figuring if I split it or whatever, it wouldn't be a big dea. Turned out that the box had a pice of BOW, several more cedars, what looks to be Blackwood or Ebony, and a bunch of other, random stuff. But most of it was pretty nice!
 
Jim,
I'm with you, I really like the cedar. My brother gave me a bunch of cedar from some trees that were felled in an ice storm at his place in Arkansas. It does take some work, but the results are worth it. Keep up the good work!
 
Thanks guys! Lou, as you'll see on Thursday, the crack is more noticeable in person. If you look carefully just below the area where the flash reflects off the pen, the crack in the lower barrel starts near the center band and wraps back to the left, near the tip. I was just happy to save it!
 
Woodscavenger, they split while turning. Out of the eleven pen halves I turned today, only three of them split, and two of those were the cedar, which were the first set of blanks that I turned. For the cedar, I think it was a combination of the fact that both of the blanks had knots in them, and I think I had the skew at too aggressive an angle when it contacted the knot. For the other blank, a cocobolo, I think again I was a bit too aggressive; it was toward the end of the day, the sun had gone down, and the temperature had dropped from around 50 degrees Farenheight (comfortable with a sweatshirt) to about 40 (hands starting to get VERY cold!).
 
Dang, Jim...I guess Murphy must have visited DC for the weekend. Out of two days effort I came away with a handful of splintered wood. It wouldn't have been too bad, but these were special occasion pieces. At least the blanks weren't one-of-a-kind. I need to get down to Nawlins and refill my gris-gris bag. Seems like my luck is down about a quart.
 
I have turned quite a few pens from cedar. I use polyurethane glue and never had a blowout or split. You might want to try it.
 
I live in Arkansas and have about a half ton of kiln dried cedar stock on hand. I resaw into pen blanks to sell or trade. It is beautiful stuff. For turning, I compare it to garlic in cooking, you love it or hate it.




Originally posted by Gregory Huey
<br />WOW What a great looking piece of cedar (lots of red) Where did tou get the blanks from?
Click to expand...
 
Beautiful job, Jim. I was cleaning up in my shop just last night when I ran across a slab of nice eastern red cedar. I suddenly realized that of well over a hundred different woods that I've made pens of, I have yet to make one in red cedar. It'll be coming real soon.
 
Thanks Mudder, I'll give that a try next time! My concern this time was that I had drilled the holes VERY close to the size of the brass tubes (in some cases, I had to push the tubes fairly hard), and everything that I've read said that polyurethane glue would expand. I was afraid it would expand so much that it might damage the blank, or basically just expand out of the gap without leaving much glue in there. So, I went with a thick CA instead. Worked OK on just about all of the blanks.
 
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