Love it! We always seem to come up with unique and wonderful ways to display the good stuff we do. This is a really cool concept! would love a tutorial!
Well, lets give it a try. I started with a blank that was already made, a pice of merbau (darkbrown wood) about 5 mm thickness. On each side 3 strips of veneer in contrasting colours. The 2 pieces of padouk, 1 on each side. All glued together and sanded as square as possible.
The i looked into the scrap-bin for little pieces of wood, some wenge, beech, oak and yew. With the holesaw 32 mm i took out 14-16 mm pieces. In the holesaw is no drillbit mounted. So that gave me lots of half round pieces of wood. Some 18 mm high, some 32 mm.
In a box i keep the veneers, the little pieces. Black and yellow are contrasting. Withe the holesaw i took half of the thickness of the blank a piece out and filled the gap with 2 pieces of veneer, black and yellow and a half round piece of wenge. Thick CA on all pieces, c-clamp to get tight joints and some accelerator.
Then sanding the blank again, very carefull to keep it square. For taking out the half round piece i have a jig like Gabe Castro.
The blank turned 90 degrees and back in the jig. Half of the wenge piece, eyeballing, no science, taken out and the same exercise with veneers and beech, sanding and so on until the bottom of the blank is reached, oak, wenge, yew and oak as last piece. Then the blank is sanded to the size i need and drilled in the chuck on the lathe. 400 rpm, very slowly advancing the bit. A few breaks to let the bit cool a little.
When done drilling.... make a pen.
