Taught a friend to turn & scored some great wood!

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Bree

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Joined
Jun 19, 2009
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Location
Buffalo, NY
We had some friends come in from out of town to visit. Unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be) I was on pager duty so I could not leave the area to go sightseeing. I had to be able to answer a page within 15 mins. So my honey took them into Canda along the Niagara River Parkway past the Falls and up to Niagara on the Lake.

That freed me to go shopping for wood. And I arrived just as they had unpacked a bunch of consignment spalted maple. So I grabbed some of the best pieces. Here is what I got.

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I was tickled pink with this stash and it will make a lot of nice pens and maybe some nice boxtops and other cool stuff. I was eager to share the wood porn with you all too.:wink:

So they arrive back and one of our guests... Dan... is really taken by the wood. He always wanted to do woodworking. He was wondering what I planned to do with all this wood. I told him that most of it would go to making pens. He then started asking a million questions about how you make a pen. So instead of aswering all these questions I asked him if he would like to learn by making one for himself (with my help).

So I took him down to the shop, showed him the tunring equipment and gave him some training on how it all works. He selected a blank from my inventory. Naturally he selected some Kingwood (all the guys seem to like that wood for some reason.) And he selected a Cigar Pen as the pen kit.

So I got out three tools... a roughing gouge, a Lacer skew, and a Spindlemaster and showed him how each worked. We cut and drilled the blank, glued in the tubes, milled the ends, mounted them up, and got to turning. I started on the long blank and let him work on the short blank after he watched what I did. I tired to have him do most of the work and I would touch up any errors or hard parts.

We got the blanks sanded to 12K and finished with some HUT Crystal and then very carefully assembled the pen. When we were finished here is what Dan had created for himself first time out of the blocks.

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Needless to say he was totally thrilled with the pen and the fact that he did it. So now he is planning to get himself a mini-lathe and get started on pen turning.

So now I am heading down to do some pens for myself! Have a great 4th! Stay safe!
:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:
 
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Good for you in both ways. I love helping people learn to turn. That maple BTW looks really nice.
 
So, how long will it take before we are talkinjg with hom on this forum? I'm sure he will treasure that pen, and your friendship for years to come. Now get to work andd post some pictures of pens made from that awesome spalted maple.
 
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