"Tabby Pen" Made Out of Paper

My neighbor received a kitchen appliance which had a very thick cardboard insert to protect it during shipping. I said what are you going to do with that? Which was nothing but throw away so I said I'll make something from that someday. We'll this ible inspired me to finally make something.

I like to make interesting things out of often discarded elements (you can check my other ibles if you want). So I wondered if I could make a pen out of paper?

I think it "turned" (lathe pun) out nice and had beautiful chatoyancy. I'll show you how I made it.

Tools

1. Lathe & Turning Tools
2. Table Saw (or fine tooth saw)
3. Clamps

Materials

1. Compress/Hard Cardboard
2. Red Parchment Paper
3. Sandpaper (120-1200 Grit) & Wet Sanding Pads (3000- 12000 Grit)
4. Wood & CA Glue
5. Beeswax for final polish
6. Pen Kit (google lathe pen kit for where to buy)

I'm not a cat person but I always liked the colors of a Tabby Cat. So I thought it would be cool if I could duplicate that pattern in a pen. I guess a caterpillar would be close too but meh.

First, I had to breakdown the cardboard into 1" strips. Then cut them into 1"x1" squares.

I repeated that process for the red parchment paper.

Pretty basic.

This was the time intensive part. You have to glue 2 pieces of the parchment paper (you may need more to get to 1.5mm thick). Then clamp and let dry overnight. After you have all your parchment sandwiches (I had around 35), you create another sandwich of cardboard with the parchment in the middle. Let dry overnight.

Repeat this process until you glue up the sandwiches to form 2 blanks of length 2.5" each.

At all times, make sure you use plenty of glue and clamp tight.

Here, just drill a hole through your pen blank at the drill size specified by your pen kit. Then rough up the pen brass inserts to make sure they grab the CA glue well. Insert the brass tubes in the pen blank and let set for 10 mins.

This step is usually fast but strangely it took much much longer than I thought (like 10x). I think because the cardboard is softer than wood so I had to keep sharpening my lathe tools to keep a good edge. I like to lathe each pen half separately then combine to make uniform.

Style Tip: This pen kit was called a "slimline" and if you follow the kit instructions it's a pretty boring pen so I like to make the pen oversized in the middle, like a torpedo, to make it more stylish. You can be the judge.

Since this pen is paper based, I didn't want to risk typical wood finish materials so I used CA and applied 12 coats and sanded between every 3 coats (120-320 grit). For the final CA coat, I sanded up to 1200 Grit and then wet sanded with pads (3000- 12000 Grit). Finally, I applied beeswax and ran the lathe at 2500 RPM to melt the wax.

To complete, just press the pen tip and cap and ink cartridge to finish.

I think it represented the Tabby Cat theme well so I reached my goal.

BTW, It's sooo smooth too. Instructibles needs to have an ible for remote sensing.