Making a pen

This weekend we visited my brother-in-law, who lives about 40 minutes west of Philadelphia and has a well stocked wood working shop in his basement. He has recently started crafting pens and pencils out of wood and other materials. The kits that contain all the assembly pieces are purchased, but the bodies can also be made from collected woods, and make no mistake, wood collecting and wood working are hobbies that run deep in the family!

Once the wood and pen or pencil style has been selected, the jigsaw is used to cut the wood a little longer than the length of the cylinder.


Using the appropriate sized drill bit, a hole is then drilled through the center of the wood.


Super Glue is then used to glue the cylinder inside the recently drilled hole.


The ends are squared using the sander.


Now the pen is ready for partial assembly on the mandrel.


The partially assembled pen is then placed on the lathe for turning.


The trick is to apply equal pressure as you move back and forth, left to right and back again.


As the lathe spins, the casing of the cylinder is gradually whittled away.


The idea is to whittle off enough of the casing so that there is just a very slim coating of material remaining. You definitely do not want to reach the cylinder that is enclosed!


The turning continues until most of the body has been stripped away. After turning but still on the lathe, 15 different sandpaper grids are used (ranging from 150 to 12,000 grain) to sand the body. Following sanding, the body is waxed three times. At this point the pen is as sleek and slim as it is going to get, but because I didn't actually take pictures while we (yes, we :-), my husband, his brother, and I!) were making my pen, my brother-in-law used various scraps for these photos.

The rest of the pieces are then added to the cylinder for final assembly.


The pen is placed on the press.


And the final assembly is pressed nice and tight.


The result is a hand made pen or pencil! The lighter pen is made of bamboo and is a ball point pen; the darker pen (which is the one we made) is a roller point (like a gel pen) and made from a small grain wood. It took us about an hour to make the pen on the right, which my brother-in-law said was a typical time frame.


This is the pen parts and assembly table.


And this is the basement wood working shop complete with a vacuum system in the back by the lathe.

Signs of Spring!

Third day of March vacation, first day kayaking! Lunch was in our kayaks out in Mamaroneck Harbor.

The Great Blue Heron are back, the hawks and crows are chasing one another, a variety of birds (including my beloved woodpeckers) are singing their songs, and we await the return of the osprey, who at this point are later than they've been the past three years. Perhaps the strong late winter storms slowed them down.

Meanwhile, the crocuses are popping up their colorful buds. With thanks to Robin, who co-planted 50 daffodils along with the crocuses. 'Tis going to be a colorful spring :-) Ahh...

Take 3 on posterous experiment

In my continuing experiment with posterous (which also could be called my discovery of all the wonderful possibilities that posterous provides) a slide show that accompanied a presentation I gave last April, 2009, has been posted. The presentation was given at the annual CAIS Tech Retreat, and here is the description from the CAIS wiki:

Three Pounds that Packs a Punch
Link to index card brainstorm - [I deleted the link because it did not work from posterous.]
We are all adults and we all spend part of our jobs helping other adults make use of technology. What can we take from the realm of adult learning and the brain that can be useful to us as learners and teachers? We'll touch on brain basics, adult brains, aging brains, memory, learning, and professional development. Be prepared to think as much about yourselves as about your colleagues! Laptops are fine to bring with you, though they won't be our only tools.

My slides were created in Keynote and then saved as PowerPoint, since that appears to be the file preference of posterous. I noticed only two issues when saving as PP – the font was changed, and a separate folder was created for saving the animated clock. The clock file, which is a .mov QuickTime file, is also posted here just to see how posterous handles it. Turns out the .mov file did not play properly so I deleted it. As for the font, it appears to have reverted to the original once it was posted, though two or three slides have size issues when displaying the text.

While I think SlideShare is still a better place for posting slides, am currently thinking that a posterous blog may be a viable tool for hosting my Presentation Communication course next fall.