First pen....

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LK&T

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2020
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139
Location
Sedro Woolley, WA
The first. Things I like 1) It is pretty. 2) I like the English walnut with the gold furnishings. Good choice Chad! 3) It is pretty.

Things I don't like. 1) The finish isn't brilliant, even for what I was going for. But it's pretty. 2) The blanks are nice and straight- at least visually- but slightly oversized for the furnishings by about a thou. Enough to feel if you try.

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Good job on your first pen. You will find that the wood being oversized a bit is much more pleasing to the eye and fingers that them being undersized.
 
Nice looking pen. Flaws? What flaws? I learned a long time ago that we're our own worst critic. Unless it's a glaring flaw most people will never notice it except for the maker. It's a nice looking pen. You should have seen my first ones, talk about flaws!
 
tomtedesco said:
Good job. We need to stop pointing out what we consider flaws, nothing wrong with pen.
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Tom, thank you for the compliment. You know, I can agree with that to some extent. Looking critically at your own work is a good way to improve its quality. Or, said in a less subjective way, to get the results you're trying to achieve. Looking at my pen, I'd say I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and call it a success. I intentionally avoided using the word "flaw" in my original post because I don't think the pen has flaws. That may sound a bit conceited but part of evaluating your own work is trying to be as objective as possible and I don't see any flaws. I think you have to have a definition of "flaw" in your head to meet the criteria of being flawed. When I look at the pen I see things to do differently and/or things I'd like to change, but not flaws.
 
wolf creek knives said:
Nice looking pen. Flaws? What flaws? I learned a long time ago that we're our own worst critic. Unless it's a glaring flaw most people will never notice it except for the maker. It's a nice looking pen. You should have seen my first ones, talk about flaws!
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Thank you for the compliment Tom. I've been turning for awhile, and woodworking for quite a bit longer. So I am coming at this with some experience in "the basics". I don't see any flaws when I look at my pen, just things I'd like to be different. To tell the truth, I'm finding it pretty easy to make a pen. You turn some very basic shapes and then smash all the parts together. Kits make it almost paint by number. Of course that's a simplification and doesn't account for turning skills, aesthetics, style and color choices and a myriad of "the devil's in the details" decisions. But there's really nothing hard about turning a cylinder....except perfectly straight lines. That's hard, and pen making is highlighting how little of my turning has been straight sided objects and how bad I am at "straight" on the lathe. From woodworking I know that straight, square, parallel and perpendicular have to be on the money to look right. Our brains are really, really good at picking out flaws around those things. But for some reason curves get a pass on that, and they look good. No wonder why so much woodturning is about curves.

By the way, have many of your knives made it to WA state? I'm pretty sure I've sharpened at least a couple in my shop.
 
LK&T said:
Thank you for the compliment Tom. I've been turning for awhile, and woodworking for quite a bit longer. So I am coming at this with some experience in "the basics". I don't see any flaws when I look at my pen, just things I'd like to be different. To tell the truth, I'm finding it pretty easy to make a pen. You turn some very basic shapes and then smash all the parts together. Kits make it almost paint by number. Of course that's a simplification and doesn't account for turning skills, aesthetics, style and color choices and a myriad of "the devil's in the details" decisions. But there's really nothing hard about turning a cylinder....except perfectly straight lines. That's hard, and pen making is highlighting how little of my turning has been straight sided objects and how bad I am at "straight" on the lathe. From woodworking I know that straight, square, parallel and perpendicular have to be on the money to look right. Our brains are really, really good at picking out flaws around those things. But for some reason curves get a pass on that, and they look good. No wonder why so much woodturning is about curves.

By the way, have many of your knives made it to WA state? I'm pretty sure I've sharpened at least a couple in my shop.
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I think I've probably sent at least two directly to Washington that I remember, both fixed blades. My sunrise folders might have made it your way or even a few fixed blades that were sold in Hawaii. To date I've sold at least 150 knives in Hawaii both folders and fixed and I usually never know where they end up. That's interesting though.
 
Better than my first pen! Better than my last pen! What did you use as a finish? It doesn't look like CA. It looks very well done too me.
I'm extremely hypercritical of my stuff and that's how I function. There is always room for improvement, but for a first time pen... you did a fine job!


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
 
Alchemist said:
Better than my first pen! Better than my last pen! What did you use as a finish? It doesn't look like CA. It looks very well done too me.
I'm extremely hypercritical of my stuff and that's how I function. There is always room for improvement, but for a first time pen... you did a fine job!


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
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Thanks for the compliment. The pen does have a CA finish. I built up 5-6 coats of CA, then sanded/polished it with 0000 steel wool. I like the way it came out, and the slightly matte finish is better at hiding flaws than a glass finish.....
 
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