When Anne began making pens, she used various species of all-timber blanks. Some
time later, however, she began making blanks from a combination of wood and coloured
resin. We cast the blanks in a plastic mould and then keep them in a pressure pot
at around 4 bar pressure until the resin has set. This process eliminates or at least
greatly reduces the air bubbles that would otherwise be likely to occur in the resin.
If the wood is very soft or easily broken, we stabilise it first with ‘Cactus Juice’
resin in a vacuum chamber.
Although we did not wish to move into turning large wooden objects due to the size
of the lathe required and the mess it would make, Anne did wish to make some small
turned items such as boxes. We ended up adding riser blocks to a Sherline bench top
metal working lathe to increase the maximum turning diameter. Use of a dust extractor
prevents wood chips and dust covering our workshop.
