Hand Made Wooden Pens by Rodney Neep |
Wood
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WOOD TYPES |
Notes: Spalted wood is where the timber has laid in contact with the damp ground for some time. Microbes and fungi attack the wood and penetrate through the grain, starting the rotting process. If it is caught at a certain stage, and then dried and seasoned in the normal way, then the results can be really interesting with dark lines and changes in colour. When making pens with spalted wood I first add an extra process of impregnating and stabilising the wood, which makes it perfectly hard again. Burl Wood is wood taken from the gnarly growths in a tree trunk. These growths occur naturally on many trees, and effectively they are new growth shoots that have gone wrong. The result is a highly prized beautiful swirly pattern, sometimes accompanied by small pippy knots
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Anjan |
An extremely dense and heavy hardwood from India. Rich deep, deep reds and blacks. Similar to Ebony, but deep red and black grain. |
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Amboyna Burl |
A rare wood considered to be one of the very best woods for penmaking. Tight curly contorted grain in a rich golden colour. Expect to pay a premium for good examples of this fine wood. From South-East Asia. |
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Apple
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Ash
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Beech
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Birch |
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Boxwood |
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Bubinga |
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Caragana* |
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Cedar of Lebanon |
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Cherry |
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Choke Cherry* |
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Cocobolo
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Ebony |
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Elm
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Elm produces great pens! I am fortunate in having a good supply of lovely elm burl wood. There are many colour variations, from pale through to very dark brown.
And finally - spalted elm burl
Each piece comes out different to the others, and I can never tell until it is turned on the lathe, sanded and polished. But they are all gorgeous and with lots of character!
More spalted elm from my special reserve wood. This type is particularly stunning.
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Eucalyptus
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Generally I use only Eucalyptus burl wood. Pale colour with an extremely fine grain. The burl wood displays some weird and wild figure plus tiny pippy knots. Goldfield Burl: A generic term for burl woods harvested in the gold field areas of Australia, but mainly eucalyptus species. These are extremely special rare pieces, and very expensive indeed. It is extremely hard!
A small piece like this costs around £50. Enough for just two pens.
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Hawthorn
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Holly |
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Holm Oak - Quercus ilex - is an evergreen oak primarily found in Mediterranean areas. The wood is generally a striped grain, but I have been able to source some very rare wood that shows distinctive fecks in the grain.
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Iroko |
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Jatoba |
Jatobá is a huge canopy tree, growing to 30 m in height, and is indigenous to the South America rainforest and parts of tropical Central America. It has a distict striped grain alternating between a deep reddish brown and medium brown. |
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Koa |
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Lemonwood* |
Xymalos monospora, also known as lemonwood, comes from the mountains of Eastern Africa. Its appearance is a slightly yellow version of Boxwood. |
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London Plane (Lacewood) |
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Madrone Burl |
Arbutus menziesii is a broadleaf evergreen tree commonly found in the Pacific North West of North America. | ||
Mahogany
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Maple
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Masur Birch** |
This is an extremely rare and VERY expensive wood. A little log 8" diameter x 12" long costs well over £100. Naturally, I reserve this wood (when and if I can get it) for the very select pens. The spectacular pith flecks and line patterns are caused by the Agromyzia carbonaria beetle larvae attacking the cambium layer of the tree, so every log is different in terms of pattern and regularity.Currently I have three pens of Masurr birch in the inventory, and two of them are not for sale! Please contact me about special orders. I have just purchased a small log of this wood, which has yet to be cut into pen blanks. |
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Manitoba Maple* |
Common in Canada, but rarely seen here in the UK. |
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Oak
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Oak burl speaks for itself. Its a classic! Bog Oak - Oak which has lain in the bottom of a bog for anything from 5,000 to 10,000 years. It is almost jet black in colour. Rather than coat these totally smooth, (which would look like black plastic!), I finish these without grain filler, so that although it is black, you can see the grain.
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Bethlehem Olive Wood |
A superb very dense wood with lovely patterns. No trees were cut down to provide this wood. All pieces are trimmings that are taken in order to keep the trees healthy. |
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Osage Orange* |
Another of the rare hardwoods. I usually only obtain a couple of pieces at a time. Native to Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas, USA. |
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Padauk |
Padauk dust on the machine! Pterocarpus soyauxii. From central and west tropical Africa. |
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Black Palmira |
Also known as Kitul. Caryota urens. From India. |
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Pink Ivory* |
A rare exotic wood from Africa. Highly prized. Very dense and even grain. Quite hard to obtain. |
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This has to be one of my most favourite woods. Pens usually display a mixture of burl, spalting and fiddleback flame, all wrapped up in lovely rich amber colours. Some are lighter in colour than this example. It isn't at all easy to obtain, but I have managed to source some for quite a few pens. This wood is quite difficult to work, and I always have to stabilise it before and during turning. The end result is a perfectly strong piece of wood. Expect to pay a premium for pens made of this very special wood. I prize it above most others. A more plain poplar, but still very beautiful and with subtle figuring.
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Purpleheart |
A rare and expensive exotic hardwood. Native to tropical regions of Central and South America. |
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Redwood Burl |
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Ropola* |
A rare tropical exotic hardwood, which displays a lacewood pattern, and a fascinating "totem pole" appearance where the faces of the lace pattern meet the surface on two sides of the pen. |
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Rosewood |
Rich deep reddish brown, with darker grain lines. It makes a very "classic" looking pen. |
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Russian Olive* |
Not really an olive wood at all, but named as such because it resembles olive. Native to central and Western Asia. |
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Snotty Gobble |
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Sycamore
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Rare and difficult to obtain. I have only a few pieces for pen making. This is the same type of wood from which Stradivarius made violins. |
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Thuya Burl |
A rare wood. Stunning burl patterns, and a deep tortoise shell colour. I generally reserve this wood for my special pens. Tetraclinis, a conifer related to the cypress family. From North Africa on the Western Mediterranean. |
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Tulip Wood |
An unusual and exotic tropical wood. It usually has distinct and dramatic red and yellow/honey stripes. Found on the Eastern side of North America and also in some parts of China. |
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Walnut
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Plain Walnut has a generally dark well defined straight grain, with some darker grain lines. Black Walnut is dramatic, and produces a very classy looking pen!
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Wenge |
Dark brown and black grain Millettia laurentii. From Cameroons, Gabon. |
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Willow |
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Yew
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So many variations in grain and colour! Yew trees are the longest living plants in Europe, some reputed to be 5,000 years old. Most of those that you see in church yards are likely to be between 500 and 1000 years old. |
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Zebrawood
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A rare exotic hardwood. The piece that you see here is cut "accross the plank", with the grain running from top to bottom, giving it a striped banded appearance. This wood also has a surprising feature when it is made into a pen. Its structure makes it look as it it us translucent, and it "moves" when angled in the light. Rather like the mineral "tiger's eye". Stunningly holographic. The wood of Microberlinia, also known as Zebrano, is imported from Central Africa, (Gabon, Cameroon, and Congo). The heartwood is a pale golden yellow, distinct from the very pale colour of the sapwood and features narrow streaks of dark brown to black. Zebrawood can also be a pale brown with regular or irregular marks of dark brown in varying widths.
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Real Stone
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Steatite (also known as soapstone or soaprock) is a metamorphic rock.
It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occurs
in the areas where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat
and pressure, with influx of fluids, but without melting. It has been a medium
for carving for thousands of years. Soapstone is used for inlaid designs,
sculpture, coasters, and kitchen countertops and sinks. Soapstone is sometimes
used for fireplace surrounds and woodstoves, because it can absorb and evenly
distribute heat. The stone that I import from Kenya is selected to be harder
than normal soapstone, and it finishes naturally to a high gloss shine.
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ACRYLICS |
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Ice White Pearl
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![]() Often used on my wedding pens and the Dean Crystal Pens
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Ice Pearl |
With black, grey & whiteBlue Ice
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Black Mistique |
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Black Graphite |
Photo to be added |
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Crocus |
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NATURAL STONE |
Actually this material is not solid natural stone, but "processed" stone. It is real stone ground and reconstituted in acrylic to its original patterns and features. It is incredibly hard and dense, and very heavy! This material is extremely difficult to work with on the lathe, and very time consuming. There is no lacquer or wax finish, as the material works to natural high gloss. It is relatively expensive to obtain, and therefore I usually save it for the most select pens. |
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Banded Malachite |
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Leopard Jasper |
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Black with gold web |
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OTHER MATERIALS |
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Ivory Substitute |
A polyester ivory substitute. I often use this on the wedding pens, including the one I made for Prince William and Catherine with which they signed the register on their wedding day. |
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Water Buffalo Horn |
![]() Generally black, but also tends to be partially transparent and brown in some examples. |
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Deer Antler |
![]() Very rare to be able to get suitable antler with its natural surface showing. Normally it is the white colour, sometimes with granules of grey. |
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Copyright ©2008 Rodney Neep All Rights Reserved