Bolt action pen

Made on a Glowforge
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Bolt Action Pen
Bolt Action Pen577×1024 120 KB

I’m keeping the Pen Blank Press busy these days. The folks at Ocooch Hardwoods offer thin stock from 1/16 to 1/4 inch in 1/16 inch increments and I’ve been wondering what it would look like to interleave those sizes in contrasting woods. I now have bins of several wood species and sizes cut into discs on the Glowforge from my last order with them. Between the ready stock of discs and the press I made earlier, it was time to find out.

The blank starts with 1/4 yellow heart and 1/16 bloodwood then subtracts/adds by 1/16 until at the center it is 1/4 Bloodwood and 1/16 yellow heart, then goes backward ending with 1/4 yellow heart. The result is 34/16 or 2 1/8. The bolt action pen was the first kit I found on hand with a closely matching barrel size.

Although I’m quite pleased with the result, I thought I might try again but use stacks of veneer discs. With disc thicknesses in the 1/32 or 1/64 range it would be possible to interleave small Fibonacci sequences or powers of two sequences. But it would take a LOT of veneer discs. That’ll keep the :glowforge: busy for a while!

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You ARE keeping busy! Nice work!

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Beautiful!

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I love your creative energy with wood. Such a big effect with such small pieces.

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Thanks! The Glowforge opens up so many possibilities for segmenting I’ll never get to try them all. One idea I’ve been toying with is to make a non-symmetrical blank from several different wood species, then cut down the center and flip end-for-end.

It would be possible to cut along one axis with the discs I have made up already, maybe even two axes. But if I made the disc larger to account for kerf loss it’d be possible to cut along for or more axes, swap parts between dissimilar blanks, etc.

So many ideas, so little time. :wink:

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So awesome. Trying to get my husband on board to trying this!! :grinning:

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Beautiful … never stop!

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Very nice.

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Great! Thanks for the tip on the wood - I’ve been making wood rings and thin wood is hard to find.

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Time for me to get that lathe…

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