Chancellorsville, Start to Finish, Part 3

So here are the stabilized blanks. Two with clear acrylic, two red and one blue. I turned the blue one before remembering to photograph them and LOVE how the blue worked into the wood.

The blue is dark in the cracks and voids, lighter and at times green where it mixed with weaker, yellow wood, while leaving the parts of the wood that were still solid their natural yellow. Just gorgeous.

Not shown are two simple steps: reaming out the holes and gluing in the tubes. These steps are visible in some of my previous "Start to finish" blog entries. Check them out, too! Click HERE for the process in wood. Click HERE to see mixing acrylic. Because the acrylic filled in some of the pre-drilled holes, they had to be re-drilled, which only took a minute and ensured the tube chambers were ready to receive the brass tubes. I also barrel-trimmed them to cut the wood down to the exact length of the finished pen body.

Now the blanks go onto the lathe for turning! Even though they were stabilized, I stopped about halfway with each one and soaked them down with thin CA to ensure they didn't burst apart. Maybe this wasn't necessary, but to me this is very special wood and I didn't want to take any chances.

After the blanks were turned and sanded up to 10k grit (I use some special paper I picked up in Japan that goes up to 10k), they receive a light coat of 100% pure tung oil massaged into the wood.  And finally, here are two getting their cyanoacrylate coat.

#handcrafted #penturning #CivilWar #Chancellorsville #StonewallJackson #history #craftsmanship #finewriting