Check out the items in my Etsy store

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

What a way to spend a vacation

Two weeks ago I took  a weeks vacation from the day job and spent it in the workshop. It was an easy choice since I'm working to become debt free and have written off and "leave home and go someplace cool" type of vacations until I reach that goal. So what better thing to do than to engulf myself in one of my few remaining hobbies (also cut out due to cost factors). This one, as evidence from my past posts, remains because it involves woodworking (and wood turning in particular) things that I've dreamed of doing since childhood, and because the pen sales has allowed it to become a self-supporting hobby.

Anyway, I've digressed enough. During that week from August 7-13 I went gangbusters in the shop and cranked out 25 new pens to add to my offerings. some new models were added, as well as replenishing some that had pretty much sold out. Then once back to day job I spend the last two weeks of evening getting all the photos taken and write-ups written so they can be added to the Etsy store. So here, for preview ahead of the postings is the fruits of that weeks vacation. 

Creative Commons License
This work by David D Herrmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What you see pictured from left-front to right rear are two Designer rollerball pens, four Designer twist ballpoint pens, six Cigar twist ballpoint pens, three Apollo Infinity pens - two are rollerball and one is a fountain pen, ten Olympian Elite rollerball pens.

But hey! Most of those don't look like wood! Well you'd be right and acrylics are a great alternative to wood for pens (and they sell well thanks to the vibrant colors!) but there's probably more wood in there that you'd think. There's three wood pens in the back and four wood pens in the front (don't let the colors alone fool you!). I had amassed a pretty good collection of non-wood materials, so this was my opportunity to put all that colorful stuff to good use.

Needless to say I think I had a pretty productive week. 

All that said, I'm now on another week of vacation and doing the same all over again. I don't see making as many as last time, but I do hope to get at least 15 done. And in the next day or so I'll be making my 200th pen! Actually if you include pen/pencil sets, I've already surpassed that number, but this will be my 200th pen (excluding sets) and I hope to make something a little more upscale and slightly modified to commemorate the occasion, so stay tuned for more as I hit the celebratory mile-marker (or would that be pen-marker (no pun intended)). 

Stay tuned to see what I come up with!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Getting better and showing it.

For the first half of the year I've been busy trying out new pen designs and exploring bowl turning more and more. But the biggest change has been the rediscovery of an former hobby in new form.

20-plus years ago, photography was a big hobby of mine to the point I had two 35mm cameras and my own darkroom set up for developing both film and prints. This year I added a Digital SLR to my toolchest so I can capture better quality photos than my 10-year-old point and shoot was capable of. I've revisited that former hobby with the intention of creating better photographic depictions of my work, but don't be surprised if few photos outside of my wood working interests don't turn up from time to time. I may have to start a second blog for the photography! But one will do me for now since my time is spent mostly turning rather than typing.

I'll be posting a few shots of my setup for photographing my work in the near future, but for now I've added a section above that links to my Flickr photostream to show off what I've been uploading and sharing with the world. Enjoy!

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A Comparison

A Comparison
Various Pen styles and their comparitive sizes