Making Wooden Pens
Some years ago I obtained a lathe. Nothing fancy,
just your basic tube lathe. I messed around with it some
and made a few things from the few hardwoods I had available
to me. Did some face plate turning and some between
centers. I found turning to be very relaxing, but after
a few things broke on the lathe, I sort of fell out of
interest in it.
A buddy got into turning pens on a midi lathe and I liked
the pens he made. Being a friend he gave me some good
deals on some of the pens, and I made a couple of pen boxes to
give as gifts with his pens. He made the pen making
thing sound too production for my tastes, and I didn't want to
horn in on his market. He was selling a lot of
pens.
Finally I decided to give it a try after I ran into a
good deal at Home Depot. The Rigid Lathe is very similar
to mine and it turned out that the faceplate for the Rigid was
threaded the same as my lathe, and it uses a #1 Morse
taper. There was not a whole lot of interest in their
lathe, and they were clearing out the accessories, so I picked
up a live center and a faceplate, dug my old lathe out of
storage and got it up and running again. It is still
nothing fancy, but it does the trick.
Like I said, it's nothing fancy. It has five
speeds, and you have to open the cover and move the belt to
change the speed. Some of the handles for tightening
things up have broken, so I keep a screwdriver and pliers
handy to snug stuff down. By the way, I have found that
the edge of one of my benches is really handy for storing
clamps for easy access, and some of my quick clamps are
visible in the photo.
Well, once I was sure that I was gonna be able to get the
lathe going, off I went to Woodcraft to get what I needed for
making some pens.
Some of the things, in addition to a lathe, you will need are:
A Pen Mandrel and Pen Mill
There are several different styles of mandrels available,
and in addition to picking the style you want, you will need
to choose the one which will attach to the headstock
of your lathe. Mine uses a #1 Morse taper. The
mandrel from Woodcraft comes with a set of bushings of the
appropriate diameter for 7 mm pens, and a compression
type fitting for shortening the length for assorted other kits
available for turning. The bushings that come with the
mandrel are shorter than the bushing kit for 7 mm pens and
require that the compression fitting be installed for standard
7 mm pens, but a set of longer bushings is available and I
went ahead and got those. Both sets are handy to have,
especially if you start experimenting with pen lengths and
turning your own center bands.
The Pen mill is used to trim the ends of the pen blanks
even with the ends of the tubes for the pen, and perpendicular
to the tube. The one from Woodcraft comes without a
handle, so you'll have to make your own. You will also
need to insure you get one with the shaft size appropriate to
the pens you will be making. Woodcraft also
has sleeves to fit onto the pen mill shaft for use with
other sizes of pen kits. The cutter comes off of the
shaft for sharpening, although I have yet to figure out how to
sharpen it properly. This is my second pen mill as the
first one got dulled from too many Ipe pens. You can get
by without a pen mill by using a sander or come up with your
own ideas, but the pen mill is, by far, the easiest method I
have found.
A means by which to drill the pen blanks:
There are ready made jigs available which are self
centering and make quick work of drilling the blanks
out. This simple one that I made from MDF works well for
me, although I cut the V notches a little large when I made it
since I was starting with larger blanks. Since then, I
have begun cutting my blanks about 5/8" square, and use a
couple pieces of those craft (popcycle) sticks to snug them
up. I use a 6" Quik Clamp to hold the two parts together
and the leg on one piece helps me hold it flat and
perpendicular to the drill press table.
You will also need drill bits of the appropriate sizes
for the pen kits you will be using. I use a 7mm brad
point bit for the 7mm kits.
You will also need some means by which to press the parts
into the blanks for assembly. Again you can buy a
special pen press, but I use a Quik Clamp with the rubber pads
removed. I also found that for the 7mm kits, a simple
gauge helps with the insertion of the mechanism, especially
when I have altered the length of the pen.
This is a simple block of scrap wood which I made by
cutting to a little over the proper length, pressing the
mechanism into a pen with the gauge as a stop, taking the pen
out, inserting the cartidge to check for proper fit, trimming
the block and repeating until the cartridge extends just the
right amount and retracts properly back into the pen.
You will also need turning tools. The bare minimum
will do, and I made do with less when I first began making
pens.
I had an old cheap set of turning chisels from my
previous venture into turning and until recently used
only the bull nose scraper and the 3/4" wood chisel seen on
the right in the photo above. Recently I bought the
small 3 piece set with the box which has a parting tool, gouge
and skew. I still rely heavily on the bull nose and old
wood chisel, although the skew works nicely for beads and
smoothing.
And you will need some pen kits. I have tried
several different kits, but have found that the 7mm Cross type
kits are versatile enough to handle most every idea I have
come up with. You might also pick up a couple matching
pencil kits also. Several clip designs are available for
these kits and you can get gold, silver and stainless steel
colored kits, along with others. Most suppliers will
give discounts for buying in larger quantities.
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