Indian Blanket Blanks Contributed by: Jeff Powell A.K.A workingforwood This tutorial was downloaded from http://www.penturners.org The International Association of Penturners - 2014
Indian Blanket Blanks by Jeff Powell AKA workinforwood Requirements o o One stick of wood, 1.5 wide, 7/8 or more thick and 12" long would suffice, for the main body of the pen. Same basic measurements for the blanket. Take both pieces and rip 2 strips 1/8 wide off the sides using a thin kerf blade. You will be left with 2 boards now that are slightly over 1" wide by 7/8 or more. Run these strips through the drum sander to remove saw marks. If you don't have a drum sander, say a prayer and use a strong epoxy in your glue up stage. Using chop saw, chop the main body board at 22.5 degrees about 2" from the end. Rotate the board, move back about 3 inches and chop again. Now you are left with 3 pieces. The long excess piece will also be for the lower body of the pen. Take the wide board for the blanket and cut two triangles at the same angle. The triangles must come to an exact point. It is ok if the triangles end up losing some width. Now take the strips and make them into a bundle. Cut the strips on edge at 22.5 degrees to be around 1.25 long or longer is ok. Assemble all the pieces as shown in the photos, dry test fit. Using some wax paper and a straight board, glue all the pieces together. In the picture, I'm doing 2 blankets at a time. I am simply using wood glue. I rub and rub the glue until it sucks the pieces together, then on to the next piece, continuously checking that all the pieces are flush into the straight edge. Be sure and push the point of the triangle piece tight against the straight edge. Keep checking as you go, then when it's all glued and you are satisfied, let sit for 24hrs. If you want your blanket to work out, follow the instructions closely, don't take shortcuts. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 1 of 7
Build a sled, basically just a 3" wide by 14" long board parallel both sides of course with a little piece tacked to the end that protrudes to act as a push stick. Take your dry blanks and knock off any bumps of glue with your pocket knife. Shave them clean and re squared on the table saw, removing as little material as possible, but cleaning them up. Set the thin kerf blade 1/16, or preferably a hair closer, from the edge of the sled. Place the blank triangles facing the fence and rip it into strips. Remember, each strip is actually 2 strips. If you rip 4 strips it is actually 8. If each strip is 1/16 that adds up to 1/8, so 4 strips is around a 1/2 inch! So try and get the strips to be thinner than 1/16 even if it's just a hair thinner. You don't want the total number of strips to be wider than the tube you will be using and if they are wider, than only by a teeny bit! You don't want the length of the blanket to exceed 1 ¾ long either, so watch that too, because you want a bit of solid wood above and below it on the blank too. Below are 5 strips that are for a fat pen like a gentlemen style. At my thumb I'll call that strip 1. Take strip 2 and put it under strip one. Then strip 3 under strip 2 and keep going. Sort of like shuffling in reverse and you get your Indian blanket half. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 2 of 7
Line up the pieces so they match nice and lightly tape them together. Cut the pile in half. Put the two piles together, lining up the two centers and tape. Rip two ¼ wide solid strips to go on the outsides of the blanket. Tape those to the strips. Go to the chop saw and slice the ends flush. This is important! Untape everything carefully not to break a piece. Start gluing it all together with wood glue. Place a clamp end to end. Because all the pieces were cut flush, the clamp will hold your alignment for you. Then clamp the sides together and you are done! You'll have to wait for it to dry, and clean it up, but basically, this is it. Thanks for the patience. I use a Freud 1/16 circular saw blade mounted in the table saw with a zero clearance insert. The strips should be cut at 1/16 width, the exact width of the blade. The first few strips feed in fine with the push fence, but as the main board gets thinner and thinner, I use masking tape to hold the strips against the fence. Now that I have a drum sander, I run the strips through it for a couple passes which makes the joints even better. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 3 of 7
Here we have one segmented Indian blanket, apple and pear, perhaps an Indian fruit blanket. It's a smidge over ¾ thick about 1" wide and around 3 inches long so you can adjust your trimming to fit your pen. The width of the actual blanket is just a hair over ½. It is perfect size for a fat body like a junior gent cap. If you are worried about ¾ not having enough meat, you can mark your centers for the blanket then face glue onto the blank for more support, but it really should not be necessary. It is far less fragile than it looks. You think you see seams, but they will mostly disappear. You're looking at shadows because the slices are not 100% flush across. You can expect it to become either seamless or darn close to it when turned and sanded. This is pear, people, beautiful pinkish brown. Imagine the possibilities, a $200 or more Emporer pen. Chances are your competition won't have this. Now let s go on and try some other variations. Ziggy Zig Zag Pens I made 5 of these and sold them all in less than 2 weeks. I just sell them to people I run into on the streets, I don't do shows or booths. I just drive a truck and sell these to trucking customers and truckers too over the CB. I have a stick I glued up for slicing the other day...here is a sample that is not glued and does not have all the zigs, each segment is ¼ long. I'll cut up and glue together (2) 2 ¼ long blanks minimum ¾ thick, close to 7/8 if I remember correctly. That'll give you a Ziggy pen for your collection and of course you'll have a better idea as to how to build yourself some more. This one will be walnut on center then ash, mahogany santos, and the outside is curly maple. The Ziggy pen blank is actually only 5/8 thick. It's a 7mm pen blank designed more for a euro style, one side extra long. It'll look similar to the photo of a previous pen, different woods though. Zigs are on the top and bottom, with crazy round half circles on the sides. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 4 of 7
Quilted Blanket Experiment Well, I don't have a lot of fancy equipment, never made a custom finial or a closed end pen before, never altered a JR Gent II center band before either, it's all new to me! End result, a Quilted Indian Blanket closed end Rollerball finished in straight CA. Sure wish I had a fountain end instead, but I don't and can't afford one, but could offer a trade of something with someone for one! The cap is longer than a standard cap blank. My thought is that the center band adds to the length, so I can reduce length by tossing out the center band all together. Not just pop the rings, but completely remove it. I glued two cap tubes into the blank meeting in the center and then came back and trimmed them. I removed the plastic insert. I would never get this done without the IAP member s knowledge and inspiration!!! I popped out the rings as per instructed, but it wasn't really necessary as I think the grinder would have worked it for me. I held the metal insert portion with some needle nose pliers and ground off the flare with the side of the grinding wheel, it comes off real fast and easy! I built what my 7yr old daughter calls a "head conker". Just a chunk of wood to install into a chuck...really don't even need that, could mount on a faceplate, I don't see how it even matters! The finial is glued to the end...seems to me those instructions are on the IAP somewhere, although maybe my method is more crude, but works fine in the end. I turned the finial to size, finished it with CA, and then parted it off. I installed it with a bit of CA into the cap. It's a nice end grain Walnut and looks just like a piece of Indian gold, nice and polished. I drilled the blank 2 ¾ deep. I spun the cap just like any JR Gent cap and finished it with CA. A bushing on one end, then I mark center on the other and spin it between centers like spinning a dowel. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 5 of 7
I pulled the "head conker" back out and re mounted it. I spun the end out into a dowel that is a perfect straight tight fit into the tube. I installed the pen onto the dowel and parted off the end. Then I sanded the pen. Next I removed the blank and shot the dowel jig with the stuff that makes the table saw slippery, this being my theory that I don't want my CA to stick the dowel into the pen! It worked too! I applied the finish. Finally, I pushed the center band completely into the cap flush to the edge. I installed the rest of the cap and pen parts. The spring is glued into the bottom of the pen so it can't fall out and get lost. I just dip the end of the spring in a drop of thick CA then carefully drop it down the hole. I bounce it about into position and when it's in the right spot I just shoot some accelerator down the hole. And for the clip well, the blanket shows on both sides of the pen. The first few blankets I ever did, I put the clip to the side, but it just doesn't seem right to me. Obviously it's personal preference. You turn the pen around you get a perfect view of the blanket. When it's clipped in a pocket, you get a glimpse or teaser that there's something going on with this pen. In real life, there is hardly a shadow cast over the blanket with the clip over it either. I can see it quite clearly, where as when clip is turned, it just seems off balance to me. Eventually I'll come back to this blanket concept and play more with it, but now I have to go off and do some other stuff. You could probably spend your whole life making the same pen with a slightly different variation and never complete every possibility. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 6 of 7
Now finally, here is the pen in the stand to display its actual size, comparing it with a Jr Gent II normal size pen. The cap is only 1/8 longer from the bottom of the clip holder to the center band end of the pen. The entire pen is 5/8 longer than a standard Jr Gent II kit. Downloaded from http://www.penturners.org Page 7 of 7