It seems that everyone uses the Cigar pen kits to make corn cob pens... including me... well I decided that I had to try something different...
I had 2 Berea Perfect Fit Convertable kits left in my supply and decided to see how they would look...
These were made from my supply of 40 yr old corn cobs.. you can't get any drier... and I don't think that a newly dried cob would have worked as well..
These were a PITA to do, first finding the right size cobs.. I needed cobs that were not only thin enough to show off the kernel structure, but also had thin pith areas...
These dry cobs also turn a lot harder than new ones and seem to dull the tools faster, they seem to be very abrasive... they also tend to blow out a lot easier if you are not careful.
You need to get close to size and then give them a thin coating of water thin CA.. this will lock the fibers together to allow you to finish the cutting... however it also means that you will need scary sharp tools because the CA makes the cob turn like marble... I found that if I sand with 80 grit paper after the CA the tools have something to bite into... otherwise the finish is pretty smooth and tools tend to skate... I use a skew for almost all my penturning..
After I got it to size, I sanded to 320 grit and applied 4 coats of thick CA sanding with 220 and 320 lightly between coats... the final coat was sanded to 600 and then micromeshed to 12000 and then some EEEpolish.. and some friction polish and Renaissance wax... the glisten like glass and are smooth as a baby's bottom...
But still a PITA compared to a Cigar kit cob pen...
Well here they are a Perfect Fit Convertable Pen and Pencil kit from corn cobs
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