miniature ebony knots - and crochet hook

Speaking of ebony.. I picked up a 50 pack of pen blanks on sale for cheap and recently got a proxon 50/e micro Carver so put the two together to see what I could come up with. Pocket knife for scale is about 2.5" long, squares in the background are a standard chess board. Hopefully the pics are visible, I took them with the cell phone before these went to their forever home.

Knotted button with full through holes, maybe a bit rough/dark crystal looking close up but kind of a cool hammered metal feel to it in real life:


Mini Crochet hook/charm:


Backside of both:


This was out of one blank, and I have one more knotted button about the same size and smooth crochet hook in progress from the same piece (plus a few little scraps), hard to imagine having this much fun with $0.50 of material any other way

Worst part was laying it out, light wasn't great and I think I need a white pencil or something. So hard to see the layout at this size!!

Very cool Ryan. What about some cufflinks?

now that is some intricate carving ryan. what brand is that pocket knife? looks like a buck.

Holy mackerel! Way cool, Ryan....and no blood spilled? I would have drilled a hole in my fingers for sure.

Love the mini-carving. Like Ted, I'd have several band-aids on my fingers, the ones left. Nice work.

Very nice work, Ryan! I'm glad you have the eyes and patience for that kind of item - I sure don't!

larry merlau said:

now that is some intricate carving ryan. what brand is that pocket knife? looks like a buck.

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The knife is a H. Boker & co Solingen, it does look like some of the buck knives though. It's my favorite whittling knife since the blade layout is setup fairly good for it.

Good light is definitely needed to avoid tragedy here, I've only been able to work on these when the sun is out, or oddly after dark the overhead artificial works better. Diffuse daylight though is just impossible.

The little mini carver is relatively forgiving so I'm not actually in that much fear of my fingers, and for 98% of the work I have it clamped in a wooden clamp as well (only cutting the piece free at the last minute).

Hmm cufflinks, I don't have any shirts that would use those but I do have a couple of little off cuts about the right size maybe someone I know could use a pair.

Looking good

Very cool

Nice carvings Ryan, how hard is ebony ? I have no clue. Will have to look up what that proxon 50/e micro Carver is .

Rob Keeble said:

Nice carvings Ryan, how hard is ebony ? I have no clue.

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Ridiculously hard Janka of 3220 which is just below ipe, and lignum vitae. I wouldn't want to do a lot of carving by chisel with it, but it responded quite well to rifflers and needle files as well as the burr grinder attachment. The sanding/grinding attachments were proned to burning unless you were careful.

Rob Keeble said:

Will have to look up what that proxon 50/e micro Carver is .

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http://www.proxxon.com/us/micromot/28500.php its basically a lighter weight dremel type tool (which makes it a bit easier to use). I need to figure out some more cutters for it, I have exactly one that worked really well for wood carving and its the one that came with it