Cork . . . Not Just For Bottles Or Floors

[William Young]

sandra1 sent me a piece of cork flooring to see if anything could be made with it on a lathe . I received it in the mail at noon today and of course, seeing as I am inquisitive about such things I just had to head to my shop and experiment with it.
I had never seen a piece of cork flooring up close before today and I did not realize it comes so thick and weighs so much for its size. It was one inch thick and weighs probably more than most hardwoods.

Here is a pen I made from a piece of it. It makes quite an unusual pattern being brown with white specs all through it.
One nice thing is that there is no matching of grain from top to bottom barrel and another nice thing is that it doesn't show specs of dust in my photography .

W.Y.

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[Toolman56]

I guess you can turn anything from wood, but now you did it, i want to try pen turning, so i google it and came up with this web site, theres is called Penn state industries and sell a starter kit with lath tools , blanks and total price for all this $485 and change from Pennsylvana,do you know anything about them,Everett.

[William Young]

Yes, most turners know about PSI , They are a little expensive and those starter kits sometimes have things in them you don't need and some accessories ibcluded can be made in your shop for WAY less ..
I will PM you rather than go into a long discussion about that here.
W.Y.

[marshall]

Bill :That's a new one on me , if you would have told me that that pen had been made of cork . I just would have had doubts about the whole thing. But then I don"t do the turning thing, just mostly scroll work and some small scale work. !!!! Marshall P.S. this also tells you that I"ve never worked with cork before !!!

[f250]

Super cool, makes me wonder what there is that can't be turned? I bet that flooring could also be scrolled.

Tom

[greatdane2]

Jeez Bill what wont you turn? I can go out on the prarie tommorw and find some buffallo chips for you. LOL.

Aaln.

[Ramjet]

William . Is there such a thing as a bambo pen ?
I stopped at a couple of tool stores to inquire about Jet lathes in the Vancouver area . They used to carry them but have stopped . I checked on line to see if there is a Canadian Dealer or distributor with no luck .Checked out the US Jet web site and there is no access . Have they stopped selling lathes in Canada and who would you get in touch with if there was a problem ? Just curious .
I spoke to PSI and they waived the shipping costs for the free dvd .
Roger

[muzzleloader]

Originally Posted by greatdane2

Jeez Bill what wont you turn? I can go out on the prarie tommorw and find some buffallo chips for you. LOL.

Aaln.

Leave it to Bill, he would soak those buffalo chips in CA, slap them on the bandsaw and cut them into the proper size blank and make a pen that would even make that "substance" look beautiful!
Brian

[William Young]

Cow pies and buffalo chips and rabbit raisins and horse buns and goose skids . . you name it . . sure . . no problem . They could be cast in resin and made into pens . . hee . . hee . . hee .. but I'm not going to try it.
I have however seen a shredded one dollar bill cast in resin and made into a pen . It looked just great as well as having some dollar value

Roger , yes I have seen bamboo pens on a couple sites ,. They looked nice.

Jet does not have a distributorship in Canada because of a long standing conflict with a Canadain company that started using their name
JET Equipment & Tools Ltd.
I got mine from Woodcraft in USA and they are in every big city from coast to coast in the States as well as through many other US distributors.
Amazon.com sells Jet lathes and I believe they will ship anywhere . Just go into amazon.com and search for Jet Lathes and the various models should come up. I have never had a bad experience with amazon.

Better still, here it is.

Amazon.com: Jet lathes


Here is the Jet Website you were looking for.

Jet Tools

Jet has fantastic service and full warehouses of parts. Anything I have ordered in parts was sent out either the same day or the following day and I had them in three or four days. . I wish there were more companys that were as fast and efficient as them.

W.Y.

[Ramjet]

William . I saw those sites and I see that I needed to click on the lower picture to gain access to Jet . Too bad the prizes were not open to Canadians . Thanks for the info .
Roger