AND YET MORE QUESTIONS, THOUGHTS.

Paul Douglass

Member
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Location
S E Washington State
There are two things I would like to think of a way to turn and make pens out of. The first is, I live in the desert part of Washington State. and I love sagebrush. I'd like to figure a way to turn some. Any suggestions? CA glue turns it a dirty brown color. I once saw a Grandfather clock made out of sagebrush wood! It was not what I would say was beautiful, but it was very unique! Lots of grain. I just don't know it was done. You can cut up a whole sagebrush and get a couple small pieces of usable wood.

Second, I always thought it might be unique (maybe again not beautiful) to figure a way to make pens of wine bottle corks and some how keep the winery's name on part of it. Dumb? You got to admit it would be challenging. In my mind it looks cool but I don't know how to get it into a pen.

OK, have your laugh:rofl::rofl:

Sure quiet on this forum.....
 
For the wine corks, all I can think of is to use a hobby knife and cut out the winery name/logo. Then, turn your cork and insert the name as an inlay. Might work... Interesting idea, for sure! There may be some way to use CA to make the cork a little more resilient. Seems to me, that the real cork corks aren't good candidates for the lathe. The new plastic corks, however, might work out well.

I have no idea how you'd go about making sagebrush into anything turnable. I'm from the wrong part of the world for that question. ;)
 
Paul, how big a piece of sagebrush wood can you get?

I certainly think you could turn a pen from a piece, I mean, if Curtis Seebeck can turn a pen from the guts of a cactus, you should be able to do so with some sagebrush wood.

Look at >> THIS THREAD << for some inspiration :wave:
 
Paul,

Never worked with sagebrush so i can't really offer any advice on it. But really I wanted to comment on your avatar picture. It looks like Kamakura Daibutsu behind you. I live about 30 minutes by bicycle from it.
 
I don't know what sagebrush wood is like. But, if it is solid stuff, just bandsaw into blanks and go for it. If soft and fibrous, it might need stabilizing before turning is possible. As for the CA, there is no law that says CA must be used for pens. I finish most of mine with Deft spray lacquer.
The cork thing could be a different challenge. If the cork is real fat, you would have an ugly fat pen. Or, as suggested, use sharp knife or razor blade (be careful) and slice off the part with the logo and embed with something else in a resin casting.
You might be interested in joining a nice penturning forum for these kinds of questions. I recommend http://thepenshop.net/
 
Alex, that is what the avitar is. My wife and I visited Japan a couple years ago when my son was stationed there. We had a great time. I love Japan, fact don't think I would mind living there if I was rich. Thing are expensive there. My son's wife arranged all kinds of tours for us all to go on. Love their train system. The bullet trains are awesome.

I'll check it out Frank, thanks
 
Paul, I've wondered about turning sagebrush myself. The trick would be to stabilize it somehow. Probably with some of that minwax wood hardener or some sort of thinned down expoxy. The downside is that both methods would lock in the wonderful aroma of the sagebrush.

As for turning pens from wine corks, they should drill and turn pretty easily. But again, might need stabilizing with something. I've turned a few cork flyrod handles for a friend that makes flyrods and I just turn it on a homemade dowel mandrel with a sharp gouge and then sand it smooth.

But since you're from the EW high desert area, here's another idea I've wanted to try. The thick bark on the big old cottonwoods that grow in the riverbottoms has some very interesting grainlike layers in it. I think both that and the thick bark off black walnut would make some interesting pens.
 
There's a guy in Texas that developed a way of turning of all things cactus by stabilizing it. I am at loss for his name right now. Seems to me he sold enough stabilized cactus blanks to help pay for adopting a child IIRC. If I remember his name, I'll post it with a link to his information. If you can stabilize cactus, I'd think you could stabilize wheat chaff and turn it. BTW the stabilized cactus was beautiful IMHO.
 
There's a guy in Texas that developed a way of turning of all things cactus by stabilizing it. I am at loss for his name right now. Seems to me he sold enough stabilized cactus blanks to help pay for adopting a child IIRC. If I remember his name, I'll post it with a link to his information. If you can stabilize cactus, I'd think you could stabilize wheat chaff and turn it. BTW the stabilized cactus was beautiful IMHO.

I believe he does it more with casting in resins than stabilizing.
I think a search at IAP will find some threads on this.
http://www.penturners.org/forum/portal.asp
If you don't find it, I'll look tomorrow, have to get ready for a political :eek: dinner tonight.
 
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