first attempts at turning pens

I turned my first 2 pens over the past couple nights. The first one is actually a combination of 2 different pens - one that was going to be cherry, and the other an unidentified pen blank that I got some time ago. When turning them, I got a little bit too heavy-handed and wound up splitting the wood when it got thin, effectively ruining that half of the pen. Rather than waste the effort, I put them together into one mismatched "first try" pen.

Honestly, I'd have to say it's more of a "use this for paying bills" kind of pen, rather than a "showpiece that's going to net me millions of dollars in lucrative pen-turning contracts" kind of pen. It's hard to not be disappointed, because the grain on the mystery blank was really really nice. The pictures are a little blurry, because apparently my camera doesn't auto-focus so well when you take pictures in near darkness, which was the case when I took these.



I'm far more pleased with Pen #2 - made from another mystery-wood pen blank. I even managed to make a captive ring on the top part, though it's shaped more like a thick washer than a doughnut. But to be fair, I don't have a fancy special captive-ring tool - just a skew chisel, so...

I didn't plan it, but the clip for the pen comes meets up pretty well with the "lumpy" part at the bottom of the top piece. Now I wish I'd planned that out better, so that the clip came down right at the center. Oh well.

I'm also pretty sure that, with time, the captive ring will snap off, as it will take a fair amount of abuse given its location inside the pen clip. Maybe I'll just make this a "desk pen" instead of a "carry pen" -- that way I'll be less likely to break the ring off when clipping it in my pocket or something. We'll see..