Write Away! Wooden Pens turned on a lathe.

One of the items that we make is wooden pens. They are great fun to make. From the beginning when they are blocks of wood, to their turning and the trials and tribulations of working with wood. They crack and pop and sometimes the blanks (hunks of wood)dry and distort especially those made of fruit woods like pistachio and apple. It is a whole new ball game. . This is a blank of laminated woods which gives us stripes in the end product. These on still on the mandrel (metal rod) fresh from the lathe. . Here these are the pieces drying on paper plates, we use a nail to support them vertically. Best way to dry round things. If you have noticed, I write on the plates where the pieces are in the finishing process. It really helped when we were working on a large order for the Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin. . Here is the striped pen as a result of the blank from the first picture. We also make fountain pens but that's a topic for another day. To see more, visit our Etsy Shop: Lovgren & Daughter. Nice to visit with you today!

Laminates Glueing up and Yipes! Stripes!

Some of the items we make are from laminate wood.  Laminating is process in which you take several layers of thinly cut wood.  Each piece of wood is then coated with glue and compressed until the glue is dry.  We call this laminate the “bendel’s” after retailer whose signature logo is brown and white stripes.



 You can see on the end grain how the glue squishes out.  This edge is later cut off to make it square (give it a flat surface)

On the long end you can see how it will look after it is cut.

This is how it looks after finishing and assembling the pen parts.

The Lathe and the Mandrels

This is the lathe.  After the piece of wood has been placed on the mandrel (metal stick between two points) is spins really fast.  During the spinning, one shapes the wood with various lethal looking tools.

Some are for making curves or spindels others are for gently shaping.  Kinda cool looking and extremely sharp edges.

 These are several mandrels after they have come off the lathe.  They have some shellac applied to seal the wood.  This is the stage before finish and assembly into their letter openers or pen hardware.