Representative finished pen woods

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Chris Bar

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2008
Messages
243
Location
Tennessee
Would like to find photographic examples of all finished woods (and perhaps other materials such as marble, pine cones etc) in pen assemblies by common names used in pens. I have checked the library but do not find a single listing of photos for woods etc which have been used.

Most of these photographs would be in the photos section, but are not listed (or I have not found them) in any organized listing, i.e., via common name; they could be found by search but that would be a time intensive project. Web searches do show photographs of many woods, but grain patterns and distributions seemingly cause special challenges for interesting pen wood selections, thus making a "pen woods" library smaller than photos of all common woods species.

Does such a photo collection exist?
 
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All I can say is "Thanks in advance for "volunteering" to assemble this for us". :wink::biggrin::biggrin:
 
Volunteer...who...me? I am in Tennessee...and orange (except for the current gridiron dilemma) but...

I looked at Russianwolf's pictures...think he has most of the pictures already and some beautiful woods. I need to look for desert ironwood burl for sure. But this forum would be a great place for folks to show one or two or more of their best finished wood examples. Perhaps this has been explored before and left open.
 
Volunteer...who...me? I am in Tennessee...and orange (except for the current gridiron dilemma) but...

I looked at Russianwolf's pictures...think he has most of the pictures already and some beautiful woods. I need to look for desert ironwood burl for sure. But this forum would be a great place for folks to show one or two or more of their best finished wood examples. Perhaps this has been explored before and left open.

Chris, the scary thing it I haven't even scratched the surface. And some ones can look totally different from tree to tree, and even one section of limb to the next from the same tree.

By the way, the Desert Ironwood Burl I have came from Wolfdancer if I'm recalling correctly.
 
Well as we all know, the look of the blank can be very different from the turned product.

What we could start doing is when we make a pen, photograph the blank before we start and then a pic of the finished product.

Would be time consuming for one person but if even a few started, could gather a good selection over time.
 
It may not be quite what you are looking for, but Hobbit House has an enormous database of wood photos. You name the wood and he probably has a dozen photos of it from different angles and levels of magnification.
 
Any Veneer website will have LOTs of pics of wood. Maybe not on the scale of pens, but it'll give you an idea of some of the main characteristics you're looking for.

BUT- I agree that there's a lot of variance in the same species. I had thought about adding something like this to my own website, if and when I start it up. But I'm wondering what use it would be, given that woods can look so different.

For instance- the picture of Brad's Olivewood pen on his website looks completely differenct than any of the Olivewood pen I've done. So from my perspective, that picture isn't really representative of that species.
 
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Whenever I get a new wood or material I finish up a cutoff piece, mark it with a sharpie and toss it in a ziploc. I've got a pretty good collection of woods in there now.
 
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