evolution of an idea

[Eaglesc]

The other day I was asked by a coworker who had seen my pens if I could make a "feathers" design in blue and black.
I told him I could make the design in just about anything so long as I could work out the difficulties with certain materials.
Since the request for the main body was blue, my immediate thought was acrylic.
I have also been toying around with an idea using powdercoating and casting.(I do not want to get involved with casting entire blanks, just certain aspects of the preparation stage, more on that later)
This is uncharted ground here and I don't know the final outcome,I have just mentally worked out some steps that have given me problems in the past and am going to try different solutions.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words I am not going to post this as a tutorial, more of a time line of what the blank looks like in diferent stages of completion.
At this point the blank is halfway completed.Total time so far is over 2&1/2 hours not including the time it took for a friend to casr the clear acrylic blank.milling the blank to rough size and shape,and prepping the aluminum.
The kerf is .059 to give you an idea as to the thickness of the three pieces that are inlayed.
The feathers design repeats six times around the blank.
The glue up is done with thin CA.
I apologize for the picture quality(washed out) hopefully future pictures will be better.
Comments are welcomed, questions will be entertained but not necessarily answered.
Oh yeah, the part about the pen being blue?
That comes later.
Thanks for looking!
Feathers in clear acrylic, dyed black veneer and aluminum.

[DaveO]

Very interesting teaser Eagle, I can't wait to see how it will "turn out" How come you have a double width inlays in the center???

Dave:-)

[ChrisMathes]

Dave...those aren't double-width...that's where the feathers change direction from one end to the other. Should be a nice design, imho.

[Eaglesc]

Very interesting teaser Eagle, I can't wait to see how it will "turn out" How come you have a double width inlays in the center???

Dave:-)

If you refer to the original post I said this blank was only half done when the picture was taken.
Because it is a hex blank, the inlay appears on two adjacent sides.
It took a few tries to get the "over lapping" of the inlays to look right and eventually all sides will have "overlapping inlays"
The pen below is done in the same pattern.
If you start at the lower right you will see the "feathers" get busier as you go up the barrel and then less busier when you get to the finial end.
I originally called this one brass confusion.
When the blank is finished you will see why.

[Gary G]

Always intriguing.

Looking at the photo it dawns on me that once you mill the blank, you can cut the kerf, put another stop block behind it, cut another kerf, put another stop block behind it, ad naseum thereby creating the desired spacing between feathers without changing the angle of anything. Funny how I've always imagined it but with this photo, I can fully envision that process.
It doesn't have to be how you do it -- it's just one more way it can be done.

[Eaglesc]

As promised Here is the blank at this stage of completion with the inlays finished.
Time involved up to this point is 4 hours.
here are three views of the blank.

1. The first is on edge showing two adjacent sides.





2. this view is one "flat"




3.here is the adjacent "flat"


Note in the second two pictures though there are the same number of "lines" in the blank(silver and black),their placement is reversed.
The next step is to turn it rough round and I will probably polish it to see what is happening inside the blank.

[Eaglesc]

Due to an injury of my right hand things have been slow in the shop.
I managed to get this turned down and polished.
Hopefully it will be drilled soon.
Remember the request was for a blue pen with black feathers.

[NCPete]

can't wait to see where this goes!

[Gary G]

Hope your hand heals quickly and completely.
G