The Run Down

I have been staying busy, busy, busy.

I have been so busy that I haven't felt like posting when I finish each day. So for this post I am going to just do a run down of much of what I've been turning lately. Unfortunately, I may miss some because I am feeling run down as well. So "The Run Down" seemed like a very appropriate title for this blog entry.

I decided to try the bolt action pens I've seen so much of. They are some very nice kits. Since deer hunting is so big in this area, I made the first one with deer antler. This started something. You'll see more about that later.

These pens feature a rifle clip, bolt action retracting mechanism, and a thirty caliber bullet tip.

This one is done with deer antler and twenty four carat hardware.

The starter set for this pen came with two kits. Since I done the first one in tulip wood, which I felt would look nice for the ladies, I done this one in padauk, something I felt would look good for men or women.

The care package from Ms. Clause a while back contained this kit for an over and under shotgun pen. This one is a fountain pen. I made it with african blackwood and lignum vitae.



Here is another flip stylus pen.

This one is done with cherry burl. If you'll notice the lighter spot towards the cap end, that was where I had a major blowout that left a hole all the way to the brass tube. Sometimes these unfortunate events allow you to make something even more interesting. I filled the hole using saw dust and CA glue.

This is a credit card stylus pen.

It is done with lignum vitae and walnut. The lines were done by trying to work on a pattern I seen somewhere online.

I liked the design enough that I decided to go overboard with it and do it at regular spaces down the length of this flip stylus pen.

Again, I had a blowout and decided to think of a way to fix it, and add interest. So I parted off the blown out area and glued on a short section of vera wood. I like how this turned out and may even do this on purpose from time to time.

Here is a credit card stylus pen in walnut burl.

Here's two more credit card stylus pens. Some of you know I have a liking for the Celtic knots. So I had to do a couple of them on some of these.

The top one is mulberry and walnut. The bottom one is ziricote and box elder.

This is called a buffalo pencil. I was intrigue by them when I seen them in the parts catalogue and decided to order a few.

This one is done in buckeye burl.

About this time the Christmas gift requests had started rolling in.

These are dyed maple pens. These were requested and I thought it was a good time to experiment with a couple of different techniques I've read about online for dying pen blanks.

I had no luck at all getting satisfactory results with diluted acrylic paints like I read in several articles. These were dyed using RIT clothes dye.

If anyone is interested in the process, let me know and I'll be glad to sit down sometimes and write a post dedicated to this subject.

I made multiple .45-70 deer antler pens. You may remember me mentioning earlier that the use of antler started something? Antler seems to be a very popular request this year. Since you'll get tired of it pretty quickly, I'll try not to show every antler pen I have turned lately.

I made several of these in .45-70, and we'll leave it at that.

Did I mention that antler has become a popular request?

I've done a lot of these lately, all in antler.

The hardware, starting from the left in pairs, is antique brass, chrome, 24k, and gun metal.

My next door neighbor is a teacher. So a teacher's pen is a very good gift for her.

I had this short piece of zebra wood. It was too short for much, and I remembered that I wanted to try adding accents like I done earlier to fix a mistake. So here is is with ziricote on the end on a flip stylus pen.

These chain pulls are all three made the same, so I'm only showing one of each type of wood.

The top one is blood wood and the bottom one is purple heart.

A friend wanted this set. This is a gun metal Vertex pen and pencil set done in blood wood with an african blackwood accent ring on each.

Here is another over and under shotgun pen. The body is blood wood and the cap is walnut burl done with a gun metal kit.

This pen was a challenge. It is the over and under shotgun pen done completely in deer antler. I was talking to a fellow about doing this very thing. He told me that it couldn't be done because the cap piece is so thin on this pen. The cap uses a blank that has a 9/16" hole drilled through the middle. I will admit that I blew out three pieces of antler before successfully drilling one. Then I was sweating bullets while turning it so thin on the lathe.

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Ok, I actually uploaded a few more photos. The Internet is acting pretty nutty though if I try to add anymore to this post.

Does that mean that I broke the Internet with so many photos? Anyway, I may have overloaded a few readers too. So I guess I'll end this post here.

I guess you can see why I am feeling run down?

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Until next time my friends, happy turning!