Thread: Plywood Pen

I Have done some in plywood ,just remember you are cutting along the grain and across the grain at the same time gently does it and a good quality marine ply might be best ,still might need to use thin CA to stabalise as you get a bit close ,to avoid any seperation of the ply ,or bits pulling out between the ply sheets. Angled cut ply gives an interesting affect as well My Philosophy is .if I can drill it, I can turn it into a pen Have fun with it cheers ~ John

Originally Posted by gawdelpus

I Have done some in plywood ,just remember you are cutting along the grain and across the grain at the same time gently does it and a good quality marine ply might be best ,still might need to use thin CA to stabalise as you get a bit close ,to avoid any seperation of the ply ,or bits pulling out between the ply sheets. Angled cut ply gives an interesting affect as well My Philosophy is .if I can drill it, I can turn it into a pen Have fun with it cheers ~ John

Cheers for that John,
Having run a lot of CNC machines I know all to well about the problems with changing grain direction and blowouts
Any chance you have a photo of the pens? Angled cut would be nice I'm sure, and yeah my thought was using the Marine ply or some good AA grade Ply, I have a friend that works for a ply supplier so i might hit him up for some "Samples"

Sorry no Photo, was a long time ago and many computer crashes and loss of data if you do them straight you get lines along the blank that contrast, you can also add some dye to color them If you angle them you get a different effect altogether , have a look at some laminated blanks here to give you an idea, these are stabilised,but still a bit tricky to turn , cheers ~ John

Y'might try PM'ing Rodent or CrazyScew on these forums.

Not long ago they had a commission to turn... 'quite a few' Sierras for an engineered timber company.

I'm fairly sure they tried a few variations (ie. diagonal cut, etc.) and probably have a few pix. They certainly know the pitfalls!

Thanks John and Skew'

John- those laminated Blanks look pretty flash, I might have to try gluing up a few out of offcuts,

Skew, thanks I will look those guys up,

I will just bite the bullet and "dig in" no pun intended, I guess you dont learn until you do something wrong

And once I do, I will try to figure out how to post a few pics

If you're after photos, a quick search for plywood pen on google images turned up quite a few examples.