GREG AND ROBYN'S BLOG

2009-08-28T16:34:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-05-13T21:49:00.000-04:00

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.

2009-05-13T21:37:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-05-24T08:56:00.007-04:00

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.

2008-03-07T16:01:00.009-05:00

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.

2008-03-04T20:32:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-02-29T19:58:00.004-05:00

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.

2008-02-29T16:17:00.005-05:00

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.

2007-04-15T19:52:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-03-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

Robyn and I recently visited our all time Very bestist friend Steve and we went to the Toledo Zoo with him, ( I will post pics from the zoo later ) then we went over to my Grandpas house for dinner. Robyn cooked some really good food and brought it with us. We had allot of fun and spent two nights at Steve's house. While we were there I remembered that I'd given him this pen for Christmas and never got a picture of it.
It is one of the first pens I made and is the first I'd tried putting two types of wood together.
It is made of Black Walnut and Maple.

2007-03-03T15:49:00.000-05:00

Well, my fish are feeling better now, although I did lose one of the Angel fish before I was able to get the medication.

2007-03-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

These are two new pens I made from wood that my Mom and Dad sent me in a surprise package the other day. It was a shoe box full of wood cut into pen blanks.
Their neighbor Clyde found the wood and cut it up for me. They are Black Walnut which is about one third of the wood they sent. It is really nice to work with.
There is also some more Brazilian Cherry which I really like and some Oak which I'm not sure will be too good for pens, but I will make at least one.
Also in the package was a 12" x 2" x 2" piece of Black and White Ebony. It looks amazing and I should be able to get around 8 pens and 2 bottle stoppers out of it.

2007-02-24T13:10:00.000-05:00

Two new pens. The one on the Left is for our niece's birthday. It's made of Black walnut that came from their property. The other is made of deer antler that I got from Robyn's Dad.

2007-02-16T14:40:00.000-05:00

Here is the newest pen I've made. It is made of Water buffalo horn. The white stripes are Quilted maple and the the red stripe is Satine.

2007-02-15T10:52:00.001-05:00

My fish are feeling a little GREEN around the gills.
No I didn't put antifreeze in the tank.
That is actually medication. But when I first started to put it in the tank I have to say that was the first thing I thought.
It's still a little disconcerting to look at.

2007-01-30T17:02:00.000-05:00

These are the new angelfish we just picked up Sunday.
We plan on letting them grow for a while the putting some rainbow fish in with them.

2007-01-25T17:25:00.000-05:00

These are some new pens and a key ring I made in the last few days. The key ring is for my Mom and it and the two pens next to it are made of Brazilian cherry. The other two pens are made of Cherry.
The one to the right of the middle is from a cherry tree that my Dad had to cut down when he built his house. And the Brazilian cherry is some of the extras from his wood flooring. My Dad gets to pick witch of the pens he likes for him and another for his neighbor.

2007-01-15T16:44:00.000-05:00

This pen is made of Box Elder burl. It is one of the first pens I made, but it wasn't comfortable to write with, so I disassembled the pen and turned the grip to a new shape. This is the first time I've tried to re-turn anything and it "turned" out petty good (pun intended).

2007-01-12T14:32:00.000-05:00

Here are three Cheery wood pens to the left.
And on the right a pen I made for my father-in-law's birthday. It is water buffalo horn instead of wood because he's a big hunter.
And another redwood burl bottle stopper on the bottom left and another box elder burl bottle stopper on the bottom right.

2007-01-10T20:07:00.000-05:00

Here is a picture of my fish tank I took today.
You cant rely see any of the fish in this shot because most of them are very small guppies.
I plan on setting up a 30 gallon tank I have so I can put the guppies in it.
I want to get ether angle fish or rainbow fish for this tank. (its a 60 gallon cube tank:)

2007-01-10T12:58:00.000-05:00

Here are pictures of the latest
things I made on my wood lathe.
They are bottle stoppers made of box elder burl on the right and redwood burl on the left.
I will be making 2 more soon 1 more
of each wood.
And the pens are from right to left
Burmese Rosewood
Marble wood
Satine
and Cherry.

2007-01-03T22:19:00.000-05:00

This is our new cat Willow we adopted her new
new years eve. She is a domestic short hair and about 8 to 10 months old.

2007-01-02T09:54:00.000-05:00

Well Christmas was pretty good this year. (Not that it hasn't always been) We did some traveling this year . The 23rd we went over to Southfield to my parents house (that's a two hour drive.) where we had an early Christmas with Moms side of the family and my good friend Steve joined us. (He is the one in the pictures below conducting the orchestra) It was good to see everyone again and they were glad Robyn could make it. (she ends up missing out sometimes because of work)
Then we came home that night. Christmas eve morning we went to Robyn's Dad's house in Howard city that's a 45 minute drive. We had breakfast there and hung out for a while. Its always nice to see Robyn's Dad and step Mom because even though we usually are doing something it's always relaxing.
Then we went from Howard city to Robyn's Aunt and Uncle's in Holland. That's about an hour and a half drive.
Robyn's Mom flew in from Arizona and met us There in Holland. And her other Aunt came up from Florida. So alot of Robyn's Mom's side of the family was there.
Fortunately I like all of my in-laws and the visit there was very pleasant also.
Then when we were done there we swung by a friends house for a few minutes with Robyn's Mom. We then came back to our Apartment. Another 45 minutes.
Christmas day we went to Robyn's Sisters house for brunch in Alaska (The town in Mi. near Grand Rapids not the state its about 20 minutes away) Robyn's sister makes the best quiche I've ever had.
Then we came back home and relaxed.

I got a wood lathe for my B-day from Mom and Dad and my Wife so I got some things to go with it like a drill press and a dust collector.
I have started to make Pens and wine bottle stoppers and really enjoy it.
I even sold a pen for $20.00 the other day. I would like to get better and start making some other things to like bowls and oil lamps.
when I get good enough and have a good collection of work done I will start to sell stuff. I hope to be able to sell it through the gift shop that my wife works at.
But if that doesn't work out i can go to arts and crafts shows. And there is always eBay.

2006-11-11T20:21:00.000-05:00

2006-09-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

Here are some pics of a pond that Harder and Warner have had running and planted for a while.

2006-09-27T17:50:00.000-04:00

Here are some pics of the pond building demonstration at Harder and Warner ( a local garden center ).
I took 316 pics in total. I love my digital camera. here are 4 of the pics. One from the beginning when I got there and two part way done then one at the end when they started the water fall.

2006-09-02T22:21:00.000-04:00

My fish Is finally starting to look like a fish tank again.
I went back to the Detroit area Thursday,Friday and Saturday so I cold go to Ohio with my Mom and Dad for my cousin's wedding.
While I was there I stopped in at Choice Aquariums to pick up my new gravel I had ordered with my store credit and got a few plants that you can see in the pic. The pants are several varieties of Cryptocoryne. I'm thinking about only using 4 to 6 different varieties of plants and all of them Cryptocoryne because so far they are the best plants I have kept.
I will post a few other pics some from my parents house and a few from the wedding later.

2006-08-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

The orchids are blooming. My wife loves orchids and is very good at taking care of them. Here are a few pics of the ones that are blooming.

2006-08-30T12:22:00.000-04:00

GREG AND ROBYN'S BLOG

Well it has been a while since I updated this Blog.

We moved from the Detroit area to the Grand Rapids

area at the beginning of august and something happened to my computer during the move. My friend Todd has been helping me fix it but we still can't figure out what happened and if it's a hardware or software problem. But at least he got it working good enough to get on line and check e-mail.

So back to moving.. That was quite an event. First off, let me say that U-haul SUCKS! We reserved a truck a full week in advance and the day before the move they didn't know when or where we could pick up our reserved truck and told us to call the next morning. So I call the next morning and they tell me they might have a truck around noon. yeah right, like I'm really going to hold my breath on that one. So I start calling around trying to find a truck somewhere else and got lucky. Penske had one truck available and it was really close to my house.

So we loaded up and hit the road. When I was about to Lansing ( the half way point) I got a call from U-haul telling me my truck was ready. I told them we had already canceled it and got one from Penske and were already half way moved. Then I got another call from them about 15 minutes from Grand Rapids asking if I still needed the truck.

So then we get here and unload everything and are ready to go grab something to eat when I figure I'll check the plumbing in our new apt. When I flush the toilet it overflowed. So I call maintenance and they came over and after about a half hour find out that when the tile was replaced some one left a cover over the wax ring and put the toilet back.

Other than that the move went great thanks to my brother Jamie, my friends Steve, Todd,

Andy (Andrea), Chris, And my wife Robyn we were able to move everything in one trip and in one day “NO THANKS TO U-HAUL”

2006-08-30T12:19:00.000-04:00

GREG AND ROBYN'S BLOG

2006-07-24T21:23:00.000-04:00

Today was a day of mixed emotions. Mixed because I'm happy and excited because we're moving to Grand Rapids soon. But sad because today was the day I started to take my 60 gallon fish tank down for the move. I've had the tank for about 4 years and it has gone through some transitions in that time.
But I took all my live plants to the aquarium shop and now it looks so empty. Tomorrow I'll be taking all the fish in except for the guppys my wife's going to keep in three small tanks we have that'll be simple to set up quickly when we get there. The other part of the mixed emotion came with the store credit for all the plants $150.00. Not bad!! And I should get about another $20 to $40 for the fish which means when I set the tank up after we get all settled in I'll be able to make some equipment upgrades I've wanted to do. That makes me happy.
Before
Happy

After
Sad

2006-07-22T08:37:00.000-04:00

Here are some pics of a camping trip my wife and I went on with my best friend Todd and his wife Andy. We went to Hocking Hills state park in Ohio. I had been telling Todd that we had to go there for the past 8 years and we finally went in June.

2006-07-22T00:13:00.000-04:00

2006-07-22T00:12:00.000-04:00

2006-07-22T00:11:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:56:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:55:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:54:00.000-04:00

2006-07-21T23:45:00.000-04:00