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Pen practice

PensWoodturningWoodworking

Friend of mine got married recently and he made his own wedding pens. Which were very pretty.

So I thought I’d like to try making a fancy pen or two. I got a pen turning kit a while ago, and made a single pen before six other things cropped up, but I did enjoy it so I’d been planning to make more and this got me off my ass to do so. First up, made a shedmade pen press, then went onto Feinesholz and Taylors Mirfield and spent a lot more money than I normally would on these things, and got some nice kits and blanks and tooling. First though, I wanted to get a bit more practice in before ruining a few hundred quid’s worth of raw materials, so I picked out one of the acrylic blanks I got when I bought the lathe, one of the padouk wood blanks I got at the same time, and thought I’d like to use the third pen kit to try out making a segmented pen blank.… Read the rest

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Gnome army

WoodturningWoodworking

Saw Rebecca Degroot’s video on making a gnome:

Looked like fun, so I made one or two while messing about with decorations.

Then I thought they’d be nice presents for the other kids in Calum’s class, so batch work time. I didn’t have many blanks readymade for this though (I’ll have to remember to stock up in October for next year) so I took a standard CLS lumber 4×2 and cut it down the middle on the bandsaw into two 2×2 rectangles and used the roughing gouge to round them up.

Softwood in general isn’t generally recommended for turning but with sharp tools it’s fine for basic stuff like this. I had a very minimalist story stick with just two ticks on it to mark out the body and a length for the tenon, and marked off the blank with it.… Read the rest

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Ten Years

FinishingGeneralJewellery Boxes
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ResinWoodcarvingWoodworking

So ten years ago today…

Claire and me just after getting married!

The traditional gift guide says ten years is… tin. Hm. Really? Was tin some seriously sought-after material at some point in the last few centuries? Weird. But okay, tradition is tradition…

We can at least make a nice box though. I have some walnut and I still have some of that lovely rippled sycamore Custard gave me when I was searching for thick veneers…

Simple design from a joinery point of view, so just mill the components and cut to size to match the tin…

Grooves in the base of the front and back panels and in the sides will hold the base, which is 3mm boxwood (lovely material, it’s a shame it’s so hard to find).

It’s almost a single-use plane but it’s the best tool for this task really.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 8 Comments