Thread: Another Pine Cone Pen

Another nice pen Karl, you have the hang of this casting bit

Well done like the highlights

...great work mate. the black and red looks great.

Looks great Karl

Your pine cones look thin, with more leaf and less centre wood, but your casting solves that problem and the results are amazing. Did you dye the leafs red before casting, or is it just the light? I also assume you cast using black resin?

Man, makes you green with envy!, very god looking pen. Amos

Very impressive!!

The red and black looks tres cool!

I feel almost unworthy when I wonder about the "smileys" on the cap, and the "frownies" on the pen body. Is this just the way the pine cone grows, or did a bit get reversed somewhere in the process?

Cheers,
Andrew

WOW. Stunning. Great work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I admire those that go to great lengths to turn this kind of project.


Jim

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Looks great Karl

Your pine cones look thin, with more leaf and less centre wood, but your casting solves that problem and the results are amazing. Did you dye the leafs red before casting, or is it just the light? I also assume you cast using black resin?

Aye, the center is so thin on these that for the cigar, I basically drilled it all away, leaving a bunch of floating leaves, which made for much sharpening and the occasional expletive (coupled with scrounging around my sawdust pile, looking for the errant piece to glue back on - one of which was actually stuck to my shirt as I rummaged around on hands and knees for 10 minutes ).

The resin I used for this was actually a pearlized dark bronze color with some gold and copper sparkly mica pearl added in. It's hard to get a good picture of the sparkly stuff, but it's under there.

The red/brown/coffee color is actually in the first couple layers of CA finish - I over-turned the blank down a smidgen at the outsides, added some color to the turning all the way across, and the CA dissolved the color into itself. I repeated the color coat/CA coat a couple times, sanding through the center portions of the blanks a bit to get a sunburst effect with darker coloring at the center band and ends.

The aim was sorta like the sunburst Stratocaster guitars of yesteryear. After I got the color as close as I could to that, the final 2 coats of CA were left uncolored to give me something to polish without losing color in the sanding process.

The CA was applied with the little baggies that the kits come in.

Originally Posted by arose62

Very impressive!!

The red and black looks tres cool!

I feel almost unworthy when I wonder about the "smileys" on the cap, and the "frownies" on the pen body. Is this just the way the pine cone grows, or did a bit get reversed somewhere in the process?

Cheers,
Andrew

I was wondering if anyone would notice the direction reversal!

Since the Cigars sorta taper out to the ends, and the cones are fatter on the bottom, I oriented both cone bottoms to the center to try to keep some symmetry, and allow more leaf 'wood' to show through at the fat parts to facilitate my color fade plan.

Thanks for all the comments, btw!

Saw this on the Ia[ site. great pen

Stunning ! What did you use for the highlights? I have a couple of pinecones, but am not game to tackle them yet. Maybe our cones are not suitable.
Shirley

That is a very nice pen! I love it.

Hi from your comments on another site I despaired of your return to us,glad you did,the pen has a lot of impact especially the size of the pic,my impression is you rather like the challenges of the way in the construction department.What with worms and dog droppings,the creek floating the fallen timber covered in ants etc,roping in the timber,all of this as well as working as a finishing carpenter. All of this reminiscent of a frantic life.
Do you like turning normal burled timber as well?
Anyway welcome back,never a dull moment.

regards Peter