Turkey Quill Pens

We have some wild turkeys that come through the property on a daily basis, one day I counted as many as 68 turkeys pecking and scratching around.

When they would leave for the day to find other food, they frequently left behind feathers (and lots of other stuff). I started picking them up because they were just so cool looking. Lots of iridescent colors, different sizes and shapes. When I had 30 or so feathers, and kept finding more every couple of days, I realized I needed to actually do something with them. I took me another week or two to get the idea of quill pens. After some Googling and YouTubing I found instructions for cutting the quills. I made a few pens and bought some ink from the craft store.


Making the pens turned out to be the easy part, it only take a few minutes to make each one. The hard part was re-learning to cursive script. I scribble down short reminders on scrap paper, but I hadn't hand written multiple, complete sentences and formed paragraphs in a long time (damn e-mail and word processors). And when I did hand write anything I use regular print characters not cursive. Sad but true.

Here are a couple of the letters I wrote...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kayak cart from a treadmill

Image
I recovered a treadmill that thrown out alongside I-40 and decided to bring it home. I wanted to build a cart to hold my 2 kayak that would roll up underneath my porch and be ease to pull back out again and this looked like a great source of tube steel. I started by cutting it up with an angle grinder and finding the pieces I wanted to use. Having never welded anything before, I started with a 220V 50amp stick welder I borrowed from my neighbor. I quickly found that it couldn't be set it low enough to keep from burning right through the thin metal. So I convinced myself that I could afford to buy a small MIG welder. I bought a Hobart Handler 140 from Tractor Supply. Its a 115V welder and can work on much thinner material. The handle and pull bar attached to the front (left of picture below) were also found along side I40. As was the pipe I have at the top separating the 2 vertical posts. I re-purposed the treadmill arm pads and rubber tread-guides to cushion the kayaks against the
Read more

Forged Sea Turtle hinges

Image
My first forging project, a pair of hinges shaped like sea turtles for my deck gate. Not perfect, but I was very happy with the result. And as a bonus, they actually work as hinges! They've been installed on my gate for a couple months now, they work well and look good.
Read more

Cube Twist Fireplace Set

Image
"...awesome and cooler than any I've ever seen..." - The client A client commissioned a set of fireplace tools, after discussing a couple of options they settled on the cube twist as the primary design element. This is the finished product: The Handles I added a slight variation to the cube twists I've regularly seen. I didn't like the look of the ridge between the cubes and the flat, so I made a couple of chisels / flatters to open up the longitudinal groove and flatten it out. This creates a softer look and helps to visually isolate the cubes. Below is is a video (I like this guy, and he does some really good work) on how to make the twist. The photo is the test piece I made, you can see how the ridge between the corners or the bar and the cubes affects the appearance. Harder to see in the photo is that I experimented with taking the corners off the cubes to create semi-pyramid shapes. I didn't like that look for his, but maybe for a future p
Read more