Lilac wood pens

[willstewart]

These are 3 pens made of some lilac wood from an old bush in the garden.  The log (around 90mm) is in the background.  The pen blanks were cut to 25mm square when green and dried in airing-cupboard-like conditions for a month.

The wood is really lovely and machines well - web articles describe it as olive-like which seems fair.  They do scent slightly sweet on machining, though not of lilac!

Pen kits are commercial - Beaufort Mistral fountain pen and Craftprokit Scribe rollerball.

The blue highlights are 'Trustone' synthetic lapis loaded acrylic.

The second picture under artificial light looks about the right  colour in these conditions.

[Bill21]

Nice job and I agree, lovely wood.

[Bryan Milham]

I've always like Lilac, unfortunately I've never found any large bits, small box size is about the limit.

But I don't turn pens so I can now see another use for the wood, great effort as well.

[willstewart]

 dr4g0nfly - FYI this is the largest section from this (dead) bush - about 160*100 mm max (of which a good deal will be sapwood).  I will let this dry and we shall see!  Of course one could join a number of sections together.