pentarsia

[workin for wood]

I'm going to have to figure this would be an apropriate location for some pentarsia. These are just a couple simple ones I was dabbling with for some practice. The first on is a swirl of apple and ebony and the second one is random stripes, apple and walnut. Both of these are scrolled. The stripes are the easiest...it's just 2 wavy lines drawn down the center of a pen blank. The lines are cut out with my #9 blade. A piece of walnut veneer is sandwiched into the cuts. The veneer is about the same size as the thickness of the blade, so the sandwich goes together very tight. Then the blank was turned on its side, and a single wavy line cut down the center and replaced with veneer again.

The swirl is two blanks, one is ebony, one is apple. I choose apple because it is very dense and resists most of the bleading from the ebony sawdust. Basically a half moon is cut out of the side of a blank, then traced to the other blank where it is cut out again. Both pieces are swapped out and re-glued into their new home. Again it is done at the other end of the blank..so two half moons on one side of the blank. The blanks are turned 1 turn over and again a half moon is cut and swapped between the two blanks. You end up with two pens with the same swirling design. Not anything I invented, but lots of fun to do.

[bearfretworks]

GREAT JOB Jeff!!

[workin for wood]

Thanx Barry...this site needs some different types of scrolling as per like Carl says...so lets scroll up a bunch of lathe goodies !

[Grizz]

Jeff,

Those are... for what you say are "simple" ... look extremely elegant to me.

If you need anyone to try out any free samples to see if they work correctly, feel free to send a few my way.

[tcleckler]

Hey Jeff, really like the pens, never seen anything like it before. Made a lot of pens and even some, I would cut a 45 degree and re-glue up with ebony, but nothing like these. I'm putting scrolling on hold to try a couple of these.

Got a question. Do you think that you could use copper sheet or aluminum sheet in between the pieces? I think that would give it an interesting look. Oh well, the possibilities are endless. My mind is running a hundred miles an hour.

[stevebuk]

Thanx Barry...this site needs some different types of scrolling as per like Carl says...so lets scroll up a bunch of lathe goodies !

i will be watching that with keen interest jeff, and just for a challenge try making one from a 1 inch square block of wood, as i will do when making my miniatures again.
Great pens by the way..

ps.. what do you use to glue them together

[Greenfield_Bob]

Those pens are cool.
Great job on them Jeff.

Bob

[workin for wood]

I'm using wood glue because i'm gluing wood to wood, but you can use super glues if you wan't. I can't see why copper couldn't be used. In the fox chapel pen making book, version2 that I bought..he uses thin plastic sheets for his stripes, but on another forum someone was using veneer which I hadn't thought of, but I liked the idea better. They truly are very simple pens...it's all turning trickery, like a magic show. I'm teaching myself what happens if you do whatever at whatever angle or curve, so that I can do some real designs down the road, rather than just random swirls like these.

[tcleckler]

Good job, keep sharing please.

[Cutting Cathy]

Jeff, Those pens are beautiful!! Are these just for fun, or are you going to sell any??

Cathy in NE

[workin for wood]

I will be selling any pen that I make that my wife does not steal first. I'll just be selling them to whomever, I won't be doing shows or stores or online stores...just travelling and selling a few here and there. The can certainly help to pay for my hobbies. I can make a pen like that striped one cost me $3 and I will price it at $20. that's about an hour job over all...so 17 an hour minus a few cents in materials and overhead. Right now I built 7 pens yesterday and they are all sold or traded into more materials.