Three new pens. All navigators.

The top two are Olive Wood and Gold.

The third is BlueBerry and is lightly stained blue,

And has Black Titanium hardware.

This is a pen I made For a Friend Around 

Christmas time and I'm just now posting it here.

It is a Black Titanium Navigator pen and the 

material is Persimmon Swirl Celluloid.

I like working with Celluloid more than 

Acrylic because it doesn't smell bad when it heats

during the lathe turning or the sanding.

Acrylic seams to melt if you "carve" or sand to

aggressively. Even though I always wet sand synthetic

materials.

 

This is the newest pen I've made. It is a Chrome

Sedona stile pen and the material is Abalone 

set in clear resin. I made it for Robyn For Mothers 

day.

 
 

This is the pen I made my Dad as a retirement gift.
It is made of curly Koa wood and 10k Gold hardware.
I like this stile of pen because the cap can be screwed onto the end when you are writing. It also uses a good quality roller ball refill and writes very smooth.
My Dad just retired and he also just went back to college and got his builders license. So I guess he isn't really going
to be retired after all.

The other day when I got home from work I saw these two guys out on the lake.

I've seen these things on T.V. and the internet but never in person so i grabbed my camera and took a couple of pictures and a short video of them.
I didn't know exactly what they where called but looked it up online and found them under
Ice boats and Ice sailing.
It sher looks like fun and I'd love to try it sometime.
(as with all the pics on this blog if you click on the pictures you can see a bigger view.

This is the nicest pen I've made so far the pen hardware is black Titanium and the body and cap are celluloid witch is similar to acrylic but harder and denser. ( allot of premium pen manufacturers use it ) This pen writes really smooth and I like the weight of the pen. I look forward to making more pens like this one and I've found some kits that are even better quality. There is also a pen blank I can get that is made from powdered turquoise  and resin that I cant wait to try.

These are two pens I just finished for a friend of mine.
They are made from wood he brought back from Peru
where he helped build a house on a mission trip.
I don't know the common name of the wood but it's called Shihuahua in Peru.
He told me that this is a common wood used in building houses there because its so hard the bugs can't really eat into it and its very rot resistant. I can see why after working with it. It's very dense and very hard wood, if you look close at the blown up pictures of the pens you can see how tight the grain of the wood is and how smooth the surface is.
It was interesting to work with and I hope my friend likes the pens.

We recently overhauled our terrarium for our peacock day geckos. We took the tank down and brought it to preuss pets in Lansing and had a hole drilled into the bottom for drainage then re-set up the terrarium with new substrate, a new waterfall fountain with an ultrasonic fogger in it and some new vines. The geckos love the new set up.
We have a male and female pare and they have breed and we currently have three eggs in our incubator.

Two sides of the same pen.
This is a pen that I made for a new Friend who I met at a wood turners group I joined recently it is made of cherry burl that he so generously gave me a large peace of.