This is the very first pen I made. I had some zebra wood pen blanks that I got in the hopes of being able to turn pens so I decided to make use of it. The pen used a slimline pen design. The pen turned faster than I expected and turned out way better than I expected for my first attempt.

This is the second pen I made. In addition to the zebrawood I had some bloodwood on hand. It sanded up very nicely and I was very happy with how it turned out.

We bought some cedar from a local farmer for our cedar chest refurbish project. I took a scrap piece of it to make into a pen to hopefully give to the farmer when we go see more of his lumber The cedar turned out beautiful but the wood grain isn't tight and dense enough to get a perfect surface.

This ash was found from some downed trees on the lake my grandma lives on. My extended family has been on the lake for a very long time so I added this with a oak pen from the lake to a family gift exchange. It was very popular and went to my cousin who is a lawyer and he uses them for his clients to sign items.

These cherry pens were a request from my girlfriend's dad for some of his family. The cherry turned really nicely and I tried turning on on its end grain which produced a very unique and interesting pattern which I intend to explore in the future.

The wood for this pen came from some honey locust trees that, at one point, were on my dad's employer's property. The wood was used for some other projects and my dad got some small scrapes one of which I turned into this pen which my dad gave as a retirement gift to a company employee.

Made in a very similar fashion to the pens, I made my mom a seam ripper for Mother's Day 2023. It just so happened she broke her seam ripper days before giving it to her. It worked out well, so my family made for other relatives who sew.

Made this pen as a Father's Day present 2023 for my dad and choose a the wood type as yellow heart and a black pen kit to make it same colors as the company logo where he works. This was my first time trying a larger pen size.

Made a pen as a Christmas present for my girlfriend's dad in 2023 I found a chunk of mango wood at a wood store and chose it for this pen for its unique grain pattern and because I had not previously seen or heard of mango in woodworking. It turned nicely and I tried a concava pen kit for with it.

I tried turning a pen our of some wood with the end grain oriented to the side as opposed to the tip and end like normal. It made a very unique look, but with oak wood it did not end up very smooth.

Not a pen, but still a wood turning project, is a pepper grinder salt shaker combo. The top holds the salt and the bottom functions as a pepper grinder. The only small issue is I don't like black pepper.

A simple Walnut pen I put together while home for a weekend. It ended up going to the best professor I had while in college. This pen was the best one I had made up until this point as I worked espeicaly hard to have no offset between the pen kit and the wood. To acheive this I did a bunch of sanding by hand to get any inconsitencies out cause by lathe imperfections or slight bend to the mandrel. Additionally we got new sanding pads going to 2500 which got it as smooth as possible.

Tried out a new wood of Purpleheart which turned quite nicely and has a very striking color. I found that it turned very nicely and has some subtle grain patterns I like.

Created a maple pen will trying out some new shaping techniques which I am very happy with. A challenge of turning light pens is while sanding it gets black dirt in it. I suspect it comes from sandpaper on the bushings but something to look into fixing.