It’s been a busy summer for me. Lots of playing outside, lots of working. There was a month and a half where I didn’t even open the door to my shop just because all my time was already allotted. I’m finally starting to spend a little more time with the lathe and torch. I’ve been working on a couple non-bicycle related project lately.
1. A belt buckle:
A friend of mine gave me a couple small chunks of a mystery burl-wood, which is quite beautiful. Dark red with interesting grain. I tried my hand at inlaying it. The buckle is made out of a piece of sheet metal for the body of it, Fender Stays for the hook and bar to hold the belt, Bicycle Spokes for the mountains, and the ring in the stylized sun is part of a campy cassette lockring. It’s all silver soldered together, as the parts are stainless, and then heated with Hydrogen Peroxide to give it a brownish patina and finished with heated linseed oil.
2. A pen
After seeing this posting about CW&T design studio’s Pen Type A, I was curious about these Hi-Tec C pens, and got a couple and a couple cartridges from jetpens.com (the only US distributor I could find online), and made myself a holder.
The grip is that same wood I used on the belt buckle, I might be kind of in love with it. The body is part of a Velo-Orange rack, 3/8″ stainless steel tube. I turned a small threaded fitting to match the threads on the cap of a different pen I had and bored it out to fit the point of the cartridge. I turned out very well, it has a nice heft to it, and the pen unit itself lives up to the hype, it writes very well. I just need to figure out how to make a cap for it now.
just saw this. it is super awesome. great work!!! yay!!!