Australian #25 Knotty Pine Stabilized blue PEN blanks

Sold in packs

 Blanks size of approx. 20mm square x 130mm long

 Packs weight of approx. 240gr

Please select the number of packs you want otherwise, the packs supplied will be in descending alphabetical order as per availability. 

These blanks were made using locally sourced Knotty Pine trees, cut and stored in 2006.  For years, this wood was only used to make bow blanks and vases, and other pieces done in general woodturning.  This wood species, marked with #25 on my "timbers list", has been part of the large mix packs I make and sell where, one blank of each listed species are bundled together, to make the mix packs.

As pen blanks, they never seemed to appeal to penmakers, mostly because of their aversion to any Pine woods, and its natural characteristics.  While I'm certainly not one of those people, as I have grown around Pine forests and used Pine wood for most of my woodwork projects, I decided that was time to make some experimentations with some of the equipment that I didn't have a few years ago, I'm referring to the wood stabilization system I put together in 2012.

This particular Pine species, has a knot structure similar to Norfolk Pine, slightly smaller knots but located in general in groups of 5 to 10 knots all around the tree and in a "ring" formation (all around its circumference) every few feet appart.  The wood is quite weight and soft, its has lots of colours from yellows to greys within close proximity to those knots that also vary in size and shape.  There are curls, swirls and cross shades that created very interesting effects but that, may be difficult to see in the raw wood so, I consider its suitability for dying while stabilizing it at the same time and make this blanks a lot more work/handling friendly.

The colour blue was what I tested first and the one I decided in produce a small quantity of blanks (42) that I also decided to offer free of charge to a number of IAP (International Association of Penturners), in a contest where they were given 2 blanks to make a pen and show it for judging., where the winner would win a prize.  There was also a similar prize for the contester that would provided the correct name of the wood in those 2 blanks, that at the time, was unknown to them.  The whole story and contest in here 

The second batch (the one listed here at the moment) was dye with slightly darker blue that I believe, may give a better definition of the colour blue as with the first batch, many of the blanks did endup looking more "greyish" than blue, they were pretty nevertheless...!

Thank you for visiting...!