Oregon, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, etc

[pdedse]

Storms were to my south and west, while I was heading northwest, so dodged showers that seemed to be dumping somewhere, maybe Wichita. All the sites and smells seemed so familiar to me, yet I had actually never been in this area of Kansas before. Fort Scott cathedral...


Wildlife...


I stopped at my bother's house in Auburn, but nobody home so I went to my other brother's place in Topeka...and back with family for a few days.
My hometown of Topeka, Kansas. My brother and I went on a hike near the Kansas River, by the Govenor's Mansion. I had never been out here before, except maybe when I was 12 and did a 5 day rafting trip down the Kansas River. Long time ago. What year did the Beach Boy's "Good Vibrations" song come out? That song was played incessantly that summer.



My eldrest bother is an accountant but has mad work working skills and a 40'x25 shop where he practices his craft. Makes music boxes, jewelry chests, chairs, tables, bookshelves, guitars, cabinets, benches...it it's made of wood, he can probably make it and most likely has the machine and tool for the job. He just finished building the shop about 6 months ago...has bathroom, heated flooring, nice ventilation system...just no one to clean it. Wish I had the space for my motorcycles!

He offered to show me how to make elegant pens

Ready? Here's the basics...pick your block of wood

Cut in half

Drill out holes

Should look like this

Insert tubing into cut out holes

Next step is to put the two pieces on a lathe and watch your expert brother do the next steps...but he let me have a go of it and I got a lot of it done, but he did the finishing touches so that there was some curvature to the wood.


Trying not to butcher it!

Compare to an untouched block, now it's ready for sanding (2000 grit, 4000, 6000, 8000, then 12000! it was more like sand cloth, not paper)

I found out that lathing is fun! Bits of non-pen flying everywhere! My son belongs to SAE fraternity so we engraved that on one of the pieces. Then sanding, sanding and more sanding followed by polishing, polishing and more polishing!


Finally, the pieces are ready for the hardware, clip, spring, actual pen cartridge.

The end pieces must be pressed on with a vice

Insert cartridge and you have a pen that costs $29 in parts and some sell online for $120!