By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Carter County resident Mike McGlone is turning hardwood into handheld memories. McGlone said his passion is less a business, or what some might call a side hustle, than it is something he really enjoys doing; and it relaxes him after a day’s work. To “relax,” McGlone takes hardwood and crafts it into a variety of useful objects such as bowls, tables, and ink pens. He has even tried his hand at making resin tables and says that it is something he really enjoys and plans to do more in the future.
“I enjoy making the smaller stuff,” McGlone said. “I’m a wood turner. I started doing that about six years ago and I make all sorts of stuff.”
One of those projects was to create something from the floors of the old Olive Hill High School gymnasium. McGlone said that Cory Claxon from the Olive Hill Center for Arts & Heritage approached him with the project which he said was right up his alley.
“He (Claxon) said he had some hardwood floor from the old high school gym and wanted to see if I could make him some ink pens. They were wanting to sell some of the pens to raise money to repair the roof,” McGlone said. “So, I made him quite a few ink pens and made some for Linda Lowe, for a fundraiser, out of the old gym floor.”
McGlone said he and his wife took a soap making class that was located on the old high school’s upper floors, but the bottom floor was still being remodeled. He said the bottom floor is used mostly for storage right now, and some of the flooring had been damaged.
“I’ll take some of the damaged parts of the tongue and groove flooring, take it home and cut it into sections, and find whatever is viable to be used.”
McGlone said he has made a lot of ink pens from a variety of materials and isn’t just limited to the hardwood flooring. He has also made bowls, Christmas ornaments, and other things along those lines.
“I’ve made cups and other general woodworking items,” McGlone said. “I have made some tables too. It just depends on what people have in mind or what I want to try.”
“I have made pens out of a lot of things,” McGlone said. “I made some out of part of a lady’s grandmother’s rocking chair.”
McGlone compares it to when people have a “memory bear” made from a family member’s clothing. It is a way, he said, for people to keep part of their loved ones close to them every day. He has even made pens out of a coworker’s tobacco sticks left over from when her family grew tobacco.
“The way that they are turned is you take your little block of wood and hollow out the center with about a 7mm drill bit,” McGlone explained. “Then you insert these two little brass tubes, turn them down, then sand them,” he said. “After that you put your finish on them and take a pen press and press all of the bits and bobs in them like the back piece, the twisting mechanism, and stuff like that.”
Most of the pens that McGlone makes are ballpoint style pens, he said. The ballpoint provides a dependable working pen every time, and that’s what he prefers.
“I did try some fountain pens,” he said. “But I wasn’t happy with the way they worked. They don’t like to hold their ink as long as the others do.”
“But I do make different types of pens,” McGlone said. “Some of them have caps, some have clips, and I have made 50 caliber pens that look like a 50-caliber bullet.”
McGlone said that supply companies make different pen kits with varying levels of expense, and from that point it’s up to your imagination.
“I have had loggers bring me what’s called a wooden burl,” he said. “That’s like a knot on the side of a tree and instead of a straight-line grain, the grain is curled and bent in different ways.” McGlone said he cuts these up and stabilizes them with a product known as “cactus juice,” which hardens it, and then puts resin around it.
“There is a process to it,” he said of the difficulty. “But there is also a lot of satisfaction doing it.”
McGlone loves what he does, and admits to keeping a lot of it for himself, which explains why he isn’t really trying to make a business out of it. He does, however, take pictures of everything he works on and shares those in albums on his personal Facebook page. Usually, his smaller pens sell for around $20, but he has seen some sell for up to $150.
“And I can work with just about anything,” McGlone said. “I have even made pens out of bottle caps. People kept sending me YouTube videos of a guy melting down bottle caps on an old griddle and poring it into a square jig. So, I tried it, and I thought it was pretty interesting with the colors all through it.”
McGlone also said he made a bowl from colored pencils that worked out well.
“We must have scoured and bought every pencil in the whole town,” he remembered.
“But everyone needs a good pen,” McGlone said, noting his fondness for the making the writing utensils, and the wood they’re made from.
Understandably, he has a large personal collection and says one of the first things he does each morning is decide which one to use that day.
“It’s like a memory in your pocket,” he said. “And everyone needs good memories.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
