Second Pen

      This was the first pen where I made an attempt to make my own blank design. It's pretty simplistic.  I took two pieces of wood from my dads variety pack (no names once again), cut them in half length ways, and glued the different woods together.

       I learned quite a few things while making this pen.  First, the blanks in the variety pack are not the same size.  They're all pretty close in terms of length, but the thickness can be quite different between blanks.  So even if I cut both blanks exactly in half, they would still be different sizes.  I also learned that if the hole you need to make for the tubes isn't exactly in the middle of the blanks, it will make one of the sides smaller and one side larger once it's turned on the lathe (if you just use a single colored blank it doesn't matter).  Compounding the different sized halves with an off-center hole will make an obvious difference once the pen is turned down.  It seems so obvious that this would happen now, but it wasn't something I thought about at the time. 

     For this pen, I assembled it so that when the tip is retracted the colors will match on both halves, and when the tip is exposed the colors are opposite each other on both halves.