u/Objective_Reality232

I’ve gotten my time for each to about an hour and I sell them for 200 a pop. In recent weeks I’ve been selling 3-5 a week, my profit on these pens is about 100 a piece. Today I sold 3! Depending on what the customer wants I offer handmade leather cases or these wood cases from PSI. Either way an excellent kit and I’m very happy with this one!

It’s pretty hard to get a good picture of this bowl, the deep black makes it difficult to show. This is a 3”x8” piece of ash that I just finished, I used India ink for the first time to ebonize it and finished with a glossy spray on shellac.

First off I really don’t like turning ash, the tear out was so difficult to get rid of even with razor sharp tools and super light finishing passes, I needed to do a lot of sanding. India ink might be thinner than water I found out, even with me being careful it got every where lol. Thankfully I did it outside where it didn’t matter and I wore gloves so my hands are black. I found to be more difficult than I thought to get an even coat, there are spots that turned out more dark brown than black even though I did three coats. I did some light sanding with 800 grit paper between each coat which I think helped. Before the shellac finish I was pretty happy with the outcome.

I read online that a shellac finish is popular with this technique, however I should have read my can and saw that I was using glossy instead of matte. Next time I would use mineral spirits or poly instead, the glossy takes away from the India ink and the shape of the bowl and makes it feel like plastic that’s probably why I don’t use shellac often. Overall I’m happy with the bowl, just wish I used a different finish, if you haven’t tried India ink you should give it a shot.

One of the more difficult projects I’ve done as I don’t normally turn epoxy or end grain. This olive wood slab was the base of a tree cut down near our local VFW years ago. They gave my neighbor a few slices approx. 3” thick and he asked if I could turn it into something. The bowl is 13.5” in diameter and 2” deep at the center. Sanded to 800 grit and finished with BLO. In some deeper areas where the epoxy didn’t penetrate I did a mineral inlay, I left some of the larger gaps empty to give it some character. The figuring in the wood was incredible, overall a very fun project with some profit to be made.

One of the more difficult projects I’ve done as I don’t normally turn epoxy or end grain. This olive wood slab was the base of a tree cut down near our local VFW years ago. They gave my neighbor a few slices approx. 3” thick and he asked if I could turn it into something. The bowl is 13.5” in diameter and 2” deep at the center. Sanded to 800 grit and finished with BLO. In some deeper areas where the epoxy didn’t penetrate I did a mineral inlay, I left some of the larger gaps empty to give it some character. The figuring in the wood was incredible, overall a very fun project with some profit to be made.

How do you all take such good pictures of your projects? I’ve done some reading and try to get better pictures but they still don’t look as good.

This bowl is a commissioned piece. I guess like 15 years ago our local VFW cut down an olive tree and one of the members cut the tree into big slabs. He gave me a few slabs and I’m working my way through them. As you can see this one was really messed up so I had to cast it in resin. To make this piece even more difficult this is all end grain so I’m taking it slow and sharpening often. I’ve been turning for about a decade now and have never really turned resin before. Other than pens. The only thing I was able to really cut a nice smooth cut with was my skew chisel. My finger nail gouge and roughing gouge did nothing but shoot tiny pieces of resin at my fingers at light speed. I can’t get a single good cut on the resin. Is there a trick? When I use something other than the skew the resin exploded and leaves large chips, I’m turning at 750 rpm and the diameter is close to 13”.

This is a 14” slab of olive wood that someone gave me years ago. Back then I wanted to turn the slab as is with the bark and branches and everything but decided I wasn’t skilled enough. I had glued a piece of sacrificial cherry to act as the tenon. Fast forward to today and I cut this 14” piece out of the slab, it was the biggest area I could get without all the branches and bark. The piece had a ton of checks and cracks so I cast it in resin. I couldn’t cut through the cherry before casting no matter what I did, I was burning the wood with my bandsaw and couldnt get any ground with a hand saw. I just mounted it on the lathe using a faceplate on the other side and locked it in place. I used a reciprocating saw to cut the cherry off and found out pretty quick that I originally mounted the piece and put a face plate on there and broke some screws. No wonder it was so hard to cut off. How do I get these screws out? I wanted this to be the bottom, I have no idea how long they are. I’m frustrated at younger me.

Edit: it’s not a tortilla or a frying pan or a wheel of brie lol.

I almost exclusively turn wood. I’m not good at making exact cuts with any level of precision. I had an order of pens and the customer asked me to make a box that could be used to hold them all and I told him I would give it my best shot but I wouldn’t charge him for it knowing what it might look like lol. I wouldn’t some way of hiding the inside and chose to try flocking. I watched a few YouTube videos and this is the result. Where did I go wrong? I applied glue pretty evenly, I’m assuming that’s the issue? Thanks for any advice!

I was given a few huge slabs of olive wood, each were between 21 and 40 inches wide but I was only able to get 12” blanks out them. Each of them are 2.5 to inches deep. The rest of the cut offs will be used for something else. As you can see there’s lots of large checks and cracks and missing pieces of wood. The center was punky and I was able to scrape it out by hand the rest is solid wood. I am thinking the only solution here is to cast these in resin. It will be my second time pouring resin, I don’t have a pressure vessel to pull a vacuum. The first time was years ago and I screwed it up. So I need to do this slow and ensure no bubbles. Before pouring resin do I need to stabilize it? How do I fill voids inside the bowl? Thanks for the help!

The spalted tamarind turned out incredible. I planned on making two Brown Mallee but the blank exploded on the drill press. The customer was fine with a change in wood. I filled gaps with crushed blue coral. The Brown Mallee had crushed jet and both ebony pens come from the same piece of wood. Interestingly one was darker than the other which is fine. Not shown are leather cases with the customers name laser engraved by me. I don’t charge for laser engraving but customers sure do love it. I charged 100 for each with materials costing approx 45 a piece and took me about an hour per pen to make including finishing.

I’ve never seen a bug die that wasn’t eaten or smashed in some way. How might it have died?

One of three for a nice little order. The other two will be Ebony and fountain pens. Total price for the order is 500 and profit is 350. Still trying to find a nice case for it, if any one has a link for nice cases let me know

I finished this pen this morning and think it looks great, it wasn’t hard getting the blank off the mandrel but now that’s it’s done I can’t get it off. It won’t budge. I’ve tried throwing the whole thing in the freezer for a while and that didn’t work. I really don’t want to break the pen to get it off but I’m about to just buy another mandrel. How do I get this off? Ideally without damaging it, thanks!