My First Turned Pen

Most of my arts & crafts are with paper. I have always been fascinated by what people create with wood and the different colors of wood. Lately I had been thinking about taking that step into wood working. My friend Laura hand carves Celtic knot (love) spoons which are beautiful and quite labor intensive. She has also turned bowls and pens. This week she was generous enough to teach me how to turn a pen and make one using her tools and supplies. It was not as difficult as I expected. It took quite a bit of time but I also had to learn the tools besides the techniques. A table saw, a drill press, and a lathe are the big tools and then some hand tools for the shaping of the wood.

It is still amazing to me that it starts with a pen blank - a block of wood like the photo below...

and turns into a beautiful pen like the one I made in this photo. Of course, there are the pen parts that are needed to assemble the pieces into a working, practical piece of art.

The photo below is a close up of the wooded turned part of the pen.

For my first pen, I picked a wood with a reddish tint - bloodwood, I believe. I am still overwhelmed with the hundreds of kinds of wood, most of which I do not know. One thing I had not thought about and surprised me was the toxicity of wood and how some can cause major health problems. Most of the issues are from the dust and prolonged exposure. But some woods or saps are definitely risky and can kill.

Watching video of lathe work is mesmorizing - seeing a block of wood spinning and becoming something else (a bowl, a decorated spindle, etc). All those fancy carves take no time when an expert is at work. I would love to learn to do that. I don't have any area in the house that could easily turn into a wood shop - need good ventilation, a good amount of space, and an easy way to clean up the dust and shavings. But I have signed up for one class at Woodcraft and will probably take more.