now on Etsy! http://www.BlanchardCreati
Information
- Location:
- Wilton, NH
Photos
2 of 10 albumsSee All
30 projects/30 days - June 2009Updated about 6 months ago
week four (plus)Updated on November 30, 2008 at 4:18pm
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Extended Info
Overview: Creative, functional art for your home.
Mission:
#1. To make creative, functional art pieces from wood and/or other found items, often recycled or repurposed.
#2. to be juried into the League of NH Craftsmen.
Products: pens, kitchen items, treenware, furniture, boxes and other various items.
affiliations:
Guild of New Hampshire Woodworkers
Lumberjocks.com
website: http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/
30 days auction:
For the month of November I'll be posting 30 projects. All of which will be available at auction, most will last 24 hours, some will be longer - if no takers during the auction time, then they'll be available to the first bidder.
Become a fan, check out some great functional art, and get a jump on your holiday shopping!
more details on each post, or at the event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=90593520260
Events
1 past eventSee All
- 30 projects in 30 days - Auction
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wilto...
Saturday, November 1 at 12:00pm
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
New year and a new shop to set up!
Luckily I got a couple space heaters.... 42 degrees last couple hours I spent out there. Brrrr.
New projects just as soon as things heat up!
Blanchard Creative Woodworking 30 projects in 30 days. (Round II) Completed. Success! Many of these projects are available for sale on Etsy, and a few to post there this week. Thanks for coming along for the ride! See you back here in November, with some new designs and more great proj
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Mesquite Bowl with Cherry and Walnut
I so love the grain of the mesquite on this small bowl - for mise-en-place, or a little (very little) ice-cream. Measures 1" deep, by a hair over 2 across. I think I'm going to make more of these small bowls for the kitchen, in increasing sizes. This one fits inside a 1/4 cup measure...!
Sanded smooth, and bathed in walnut oil, then buffed dry. (It will be a kitchen bowl after all.) Looks good enough to put up on a display shelf. I could, but I'm not going to, this puppy is gonna get some use. Richard Raffan would be proud.
... hmm... seems about the same size of the other small mesquite bowl and napkin ring. I wonder what look alike might be in the works...
This is the last project in my 30 projects in 30 days challenge Will I keep making more out of habit?....
check out my other offerings for sale at Etsy
My Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Return of the (Teeny Tiny Osage) Ring
Now this tops the scale... or rather whatever the reverse of that is, as the smallest ring made to date. smaller in diameter than a dime, (barely larger than the power button on my Powerbook)
(something like 17mm outside diameter, 15mm inside)
This asymmetrical ring design has two out...side bands of gen-u-wine Texas Osage Orange, and a center band of Yellow Heart. Sanded to 600 grit, ( I had to use dremel sanding drums to get the inside, nothing I'd previously made was small enough!) and finished with bowling alley wax. This ring was to replace the quasi-broken, unfinished one my wife claimed regardless of those, umm, qualities.
This one however is too small for her. I'll have to try sanding the middle a bit more... otherwise there's a little someone else in the house who really wants this one.
The other issue I'm encountering with these supersmall rings, you've probably already noticed, I can't quite get the camera to focus on them, even with the macro setting. Now you know that's small!
This isn't for sale, but you can check out my other offerings at Etsy, or if you'd like a similar ring in your size, lemme know!
My Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking giving my 30 in 30 challenge another go. Faster, bigger, stronger, more! Pens and ??? to come.
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Cherry Burl and Cherry... Fraternal Twins
A few months back, a fellow lumberjock gave several of us a piece of cherry burl that showed up on his doorstep and challenged us to make a pen with it.
I managed to squeak two out of that blank!.. The Wall street click pen on top (I'd previously blogged having some technical dif...ficulties with - see previous picture), and it's sister pen, a Eurostyle double twist. Both pens have platinum hardware.
Not only did I make both pens are made from the same piece of cherry burl, I used the exact same piece of cherry as well. I’d thought about using a different species, or another piece of cherry from the same lumberjocks collection (we have a box that we mail around to each other, trading our boring local woods for each others (boring local woods - exotics to us!). It seemed like the right thing to do, but I thought that the fancier grain of the crotch cherry I had might compete with the burl, so I opted for a simpler, straighter grained piece. The color seems just about a perfect match to boot.
Both pens turned beautifully, sanded - hand sanded - to 4000 grit, then sanded/buffed to a glass finish, and finished with boiled linseed oil, shellac and carnauba wax.
what else came of that cherry burl? : http://lumberjocks.com/projects/tag/391c
These? and other projects available for sale at my Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Nightmare on Wall Street
I've posted two Wall Street twist models most recently, and tonight I tried my hand at a click version of the same pen.
First up was cocobolo, a lovely brownish striped wood, when turned it looks purple and orange, and returns to rich browns when exposed to air and finished with oil... at least i...t normally does. - this piece is half caramel and cocoa, and half... umm, fruit stripe gum. If it didn't brown at all, it'd make a nice pen for a student or teacher at Nashua High (South if you're under 20). Purple, Purple, White, White, Go Panthers, let's fight!
so.... while this pen turned beautifully, was sanded - hand sanded - to 4000 grit, then buffed to a glass finish... I have to set it aside to see what, if anything I can do with it.
Then I tried this piece of cherry, Turned great, one little chip out, that I thought I'd have to patch in a repair piece (spontaneous design change, not a mistake ;) but I was able to make a near perfect repair with superglue and fine sawdust. Yay!
So I started putting the pen together. Looks good, but only seems to click from out, to way out. why won't it retract? was the mechanism jammed? take it apart, put it together, repeat. repeat...
repeat.
Ok, did I cut the wood too short? oops, I used the wrong tubes. Why did the sell only one size of replacement tubes under the Wall street label? My bad for not using the ones in the kit, not that I was expecting them not to be the right ones.... now what to do.
Can I trim some of the mechanical pieces in the pens inner workings? probably, but that might cause more issues...
I suppose I can go back to that "add on a top piece" idea I thought I'd have to do anyway.
will anything come of it? time will tell....
or it won't.
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Monkey Pod on Wall Street
(that's pod, not paw) No bad luck wishes here.
Platinum and Black Titanium dress up this twist pen, with a Hawaiian flavor.
Monkey-pod (Pithecellobium saman), samán in Spanish, is a fast-growing tree that has been introduced to many tropical countries throughout the world from its native habitats... in Central America and northern South America. Although generally planted as a shade tree and ornamental, it has been naturalized in many countries and is greatly valued in pastures as shade for cattle. Short-boled, with a spreading crown when open grown, it forms a long, relatively straight stem when closely spaced. Its wood is highly valued in some locations for carvings and furniture.The tree was reportedly introduced into Hawaii in 1847, when Peter A. Brinsmade, a businessman visiting Europe, returned to Hawaii, presumably via Panama, with two seeds, both of which germinated. One of the seedlings was planted in downtown Honolulu, the other at Koloa on the island of Kauai. These seedlings are possibly the progenitors of all the monkey-pod trees now in Hawaii.
Sanded to 2000 grit, finished with boiled linseed oil and friction polish (shellac and carnauba wax). The grain in this pen has light and dark figure that shimmers in the light - Chatoyance!
Available for sale at my Etsy store tomorrow night (Wed 6/24/09) http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Desert Ironwood Pen in Platinum and Black Titanium
I love this pen, and I love this wood. The grain is simply amazing.
Desert Ironwood is a protected species, no living trees can be harvested. It grows in the Sonoran Desert in Southwest USA and Mexico, and you need a federal or state permit to be able to collect the dead... trees from the desert. It’s very slow growing shrub to small gnarly tree, with lots of splits and cracks and very tight growth rings. The sapwood is light yellow, the heartwood is brown with black streaks. When it is sanded it shines like no other wood I’ve ever seen and hard as a rock and heavy, It sinks in water.
The twist pen (Wall Street model) is platinum and black titanium (also called gunmetal) Both are the most durable finishes you can get for a pen. Between the wood and hardware, this pen will last a lifetime, or several.
The pen is hand sanded from 220 up to 2000 grit (which is about as abrasive as a paper bag!) buffed, and then finished with boiled linseed oil and several layers of high gloss friction polish - a blend of shellac and carnauba wax.
This pen has sold. See what else is available for sale at my Etsy store - http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Tulipwood pen in gold
Not to be confused with the yellow-green wood of the tuliptree, found on the Eastern side of North America and also in some parts of China. (Aka tulip poplar or yellow poplar, even though the tree is not related to the poplars). Brazilian tulipwood is a different species altogether. Also called Pau... rosa, Bois de rose, Pinkwood, Pau de fuso, Jacaranda rosa, it is a very colorful wood with irregular streaks of yellow, rose and red or violet on a cream to straw colored background.
This south american wood is described as hard and heavy, and takes a polish well. This pen is sanded and buffed super smooth, and is finished with boiled linseed oil and friction polish.
Available for sale at my Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking giving my 30 in 30 challenge another go. Faster, bigger, stronger, more! Pens and ??? to come.
4 new photos
Blanchard Creative Woodworking sneek preview of week three projects:
30 projects in 30 days #9: week three in pre-view - by scottb | LumberJocks.com :: woodworking commu
lumberjocks.com
I didn’t take on this challenge having to make a project every day, just start and finish 30 of them in 30 days. Well, this week is looking to be rather busy… so I took advantage of the rainy day, and get a few things knocked off. ...
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
B and B
Bocote and Bubinga rings
The bigger, redder one of the pair is Bubinga, which is bookmatched - cut from the same piece and glued up so that the both outer bands seem to mirror each other. This is cut from the same block as this bottlestopper: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=10
20 mm insid...e diameter, 1 cm wide.
The smaller, striped one is Bocote, similar to the pen posted 2 pictures back in this album. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=18
18 mm inside diameter, 7 mm wide. The smallest (and most comfortable) I've made to date. If I get much smaller, I might have to use X-acto knives as chisels!
The Bubinga is accented with a walnut center band and is finished with walnut oil. The Bocote ring is paired with with cherry, and is finished with multiple applications of bowling alley wax.
Available for sale individually at my Etsy store (Tues, 6/23/09) http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
Blanchard Creative Woodworking
Spalted Willow Oak Pen
I received this piece of wood in a pen turners swap box that toured the country... continent actually, as we had some lumberjocks participating north of the border.
This was put in as a challenge blank for all the participants to take one, and see what they could make of it. The wood was described ...as flaky, and difficult to turn. So far we've found the wood pretty easy to turn, but a bit harder to get a perfectly smooth finish, given the open pore structure of the wood. It took the finish great, and had a nice tactile feel to it. I love the interplay of the colors.
Willow Oak is one of the red oaks, distinguished by it's willow like leaves. It's one of the most popular trees in horticultural plantings, and is very important to wildlife due to its heavy acorn production.
Here are (to date) two other pens made from the same wood: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/tag/391b
Available for sale at my Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=697
