@Twvaman is the original seller. I bought five blanks from him here at Penturners.org. Twvaman had his bog oak dated by a university using tree ring spacing. He sent a copy of the report to me by email. The Irish bog oak that he sold to me comes from Roscommon Bog in Ireland. A few weeks ago, I sent a PM request to buy 10 more, but he never responded. I searched and found his account on eBay. I bought 10 more blanks from him through eBay. He does not have anything for sale on eBay at this time.
I received two types of Irish bog oak from twvaman. I call them "dark" and "light". The dark ones are more common. They are nearly pure black and are denser. The light ones are more brownish gray in color and weigh about 2/3 as much as the dark ones.
I wrote to the university researcher who dated the blanks, and he informed me that the species of oak for my Irish bog oak blanks is either Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.), Sessile oak (Quercus petraea), or a hybrid of the two species. They are types of white oak.
I turned a few pens from the Irish bog oak blanks. They are easy to turn if you are careful. The wood is very dry and it splinters easily. The sawdust is like charcoal. It chips out easily. I found that freshly sharpened high speed steel (HSS) tools worked better than sharp carbide. I have turned many species of wood, but this is the first time I have turned oak. I have used oak for furniture and cabinets in the past, but not for turning.
CA finish does not look good on these pen blanks, in my opinion. I used GluBoost Fill 'n' Finish. The CA finish made the pens shiny and totally black, even with the lighter colored blanks. I used Hut Crystal coat on two recent pens. Crystal Coat is not a durable finish, but it looks and feels much better on the bog oak than the CA finish. The attached photo is a Celtic twist pen in antique pewter with a "dark" (my term) Irish bog oak pen blank from Roscommon Bog, finished in Hut Crystal Coat.
A friend recently asked me about the Irish bog oak I had bought. He wanted to try some for himself. When I could not find more bog oak from twvaman, I searched on eBay for "bog oak pen blanks", "Irish bog oak pen blanks", "Roscommon pen blanks", etc.
You can buy bog oak pen blanks from different bogs around the world. I found Irish, English, Russian, and other sources. They had a range of dates, but the Irish bog oak from twvaman is the oldest I found at 6500 years. I think that the age of the wood adds to their appeal, so the older, the better.
I found a different seller who has Irish bog oak pen blanks from Roscommon on eBay. The listings say that it ranges from 3000 years old to 8000 years old, but it may not have been scientifically dated like the bog oak from twvaman. It looks the same in photos, but you cannot learn much from looking at photos. It occurred to me that oak trees probably fell into the Roscommon Bog over a period of several thousand years, so there is no guarantee that undated bog oak from Roscommon comes from the same 6500 year old tree as my Irish bog oak.
