I’m really enjoying working on segmented pens lately. They provide that something extra that really makes the pen stand out.
I’ve finished two of these lately one with oak and wengé used in a straight and one which started life as an olive wood blank and was cut at a 45° miter for some accent segments.
the hardest part about this is selecting the wood species with regards to grain density. For instance the oak has a pretty coarse grain and the wengé a very fine grain.
This means that when sanding the very fine (black) dust of the wengé gets trapped in the oak grain, leaving the darker stripes. Normally I would not like that, but on this pen I believe it gives the oak an aged effect.
I liked how the maple and padauk segments look next to the figured olive wood. But I don’t think I will be using the beech again. It’s nice and hard with straight grain, but look a bit too bland. Luckily I only used it for a small segment so the pen still turned out OK.
Now if you’re reading this and you’re thinking it’s all happy accidents and coincident, think again. When making the last 10 pens, about 4 segments were ruined.
This can happen due to mistakes in the gluing up process or turning. one segment came apart at the aluminum separators, another olive segment kind of blew up when I was finishing the ends. Just remember that I usually only share the successful projects.
It might be interesting to share the mistakes in a separate post .. I’ll think about that.
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Since I keep making these pens, I need to sell some every now and then to make room for new creations.
Feel free to browse my Etsy shop for these pens and other items.
[etsy-shop shop_name=”mrRubenWoodcraft” section_id=”23607166″]
