Reply by moke

I was at a Wood Festival last weekend. There were several vendors there with pens. There were two vendors there with slimlines right around 10.00. I looked them over carefully, and it was obvious that the maker just cut up whatever wood he/she had and used that for blanks. IMHO this made for very ho-hum pens. If you are going to raid the woodpile at least look for highly figured wood to make interesting pens. If you look around you can assortments that are 2-$4 a blank that are exptic woods and make for more intesting looking pens.

When you have just plain oak or walnut, maybe consider cutting in a simple segment. It is very easy to add a segment at 45 degrees, that way if you don’t get the blank square, it doesn’t show. Segmenting is difficult at best when you turn a slimline because there is so little material left around the tube, but most vendors offer an slightly upsized kit, like trimline, hart double twist, etc…for maybe a dollar a kit more.

The best site IMHO for cool blanks is Exoctic Blanks…..www.exoticblanks.com
Mike

-- Mike