Can't let Larry have all the glory So here are some of my pens..
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Alternative Marble
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Black Locust Burl
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Red Palm
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Corn Cob... yes good old corn cob
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Big Leaf Maple Burl
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Gold Amboyna Burl
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Alternative Red Coral, Jade and Blue Coral
These were part of a limited edition of 25 pens, I have two left.
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1. Spanish Oak, 2. Alternative Horn, 3. Alternative Onyx, 4. Spanish Oak Burl
5. Rattle Snake, 6. Alternative Amber, 7. Brown English Oak, 8. Spalted Pecan
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Beautiful! Also I want to add your input and expertise is really very helpful on all the threads. Thanks. B.

Tom the Black Locust Burl is beautiful, all of them are, but that is my favorite. Do you do a piston filler?

Can I have them.........................?

Were you interested in an actual purchase, or shall I attempt to purlion them for you when I see Griz this weekend?

If you are going to go to all the trouble of purlioning one, grab them all, I am sure there are several of us on here that would not mind receiving them!

Sorry, but we don't have access to a piston fill system.... I have been discussing it with someone however, we shall see what happens...

Pens covered in blood and human gore (and I am not talking about my blood and gore) really don't write very well...
On top of that by the time Larry recovered from his wounds you might not want them....

Griz, what are the concerns in working with corn cob. Is the material stable? After all, it isn't quite "wood."

Andy

Corn Cob is a very interesting and somewhat frustrating material to work with...
First of all what you really want is dried feed corn... I am lucky to live on a farm and we have an old chicken coop that has not seen a chicken in 30 yrs, but has a load of old corn cobs scattered about... that is what I use... 30+ yr old corn cobs.. you are not getting any drier than that...
The second problem is diameter of the inner core... if it is too big you don't get the pattern of the corn on the pen.. you get the core... so you need to look for thin cored cobs....
Next comes drilling the cobs so that you go dead center through the core so you get an even pattern when it is turned round
Then comes the turning... cobs are extremely chippy and don't cut like wood, so the tools need to be scary sharp and you need a light hand and even then you may blow a cob off the lathe...
Once you get close to the finished diameter, the cobs need to be soaked to get them hard enough to finish cut and sand....
Then comes finish cutting, sanding to 1000 grit and a lacquer finish that takes a week to cure before being buffed out and then the pen is assembled...
Almost sounds like it is not worth the work, until you see one close up and they are fantastic looking...
I only do corn cob pens now on special order because of the amount of work involved in getting on absolutley perfect... that and the fact that not everyone wants a pen made from cow feed.

In that photo it certainly does look worth the effort.

DO you ever turn any 'closed-end' pens? I'll admit that it was the big, bright (not always terribly refined-looking) barrel ends that initially put me off some turners' (not yours) work. It was when I discovered what some guys were doing without those that I got really excited. It's just my aesthetic preference...

Yes I also do closed ends...but only on special order... and not all materials are suitable for them...
I am playing with an idea now that will hopefully, if I get the bugs out, turn out to be a nice closed end that looks like a very popular vintage pen....

Thanks Griz, I figured it was a complex process.

How does the corn cob hold up over time?

Andy

If done properly by someone who knows what they are doing they stand up very well.... obviously, you don't want to go banging it around as corn cob is a little softer than wood, but who goes around purposely banging their pens into the corners of tables...

Beautiful! Nice colors!

Nice work Griz!! Ummm how exactly does one turn a rattle snake into a pen??? Love the cob pen!!

Very tasty stuff Tom

That Azelia burl would have to be my favourite, I think. You got a really lovely finish there.

I'd love to see that dragon in silver on a very plain black ebonite body, I have a feeling it would be super.
Might be worth mocking it up in Photoshop out of curiousity??

The corncob has a very striking pattern - Wow!
How did you go about stabilising it? - epoxy/cyanoacrylate...? I'm dead curious

Regards,
Ruaidhrí

VERY CAREFULLY..... first you have to get a young rattlesnake to swallow the body and cap hardware. Then feed it a special diet to get it to grow to just the right size for a pen.... After carefully dispatching said snake, you need to dry out the parts where the body and cap will be... then comes the finishing and mounting of the remaining hardware...
It is a process only for the extremely brave and pure of heart. Which is one of the reasons I have been successful






Now for the real truth. Dried Rattlesnake skin is glued to the brass tubing that is used for the body and cap of the pen. It is then cast in a clear acrylic. When the acrylic cures, it is trimmed to the proper dimensions and mounted on the lathe and carefully turned. After turning to size, it then wet sanded to 12000 grit MicroMesh. After than it is further finished with automotive polishing compound and then plastic polish. The final polishing stages are the most tricky to make sure there are no micro scratches or swirls in the acrylic.
The acrylic actually acts like a magnifying glass making the snake skin look like it at the surface...

if you were to create a pen cap and barrel, you could allow for a recess, and apply a leather covering around the cap and barrel, in the recessed area, much like chilton did with their boston pens, and I think Eversharp made a few pencils that way. The trick is getting the leather thin enough to wrap, the edges thin enough that they lay flat, and the pattern to line up. Having the skin in acrylic, is better, since it will never wear thru.

I will say that I am most impressed with the skillset it takes to make anything like this. I got the lathe, I got the desire, now I need the knowhow and time.