pen drilling question

Tutorial *LINK*

Fred in NC

>Mark:

The blanks need to be drilled before they get turned to the final shape.

Russ Fairfield, who is in this forum, has an excellent tutorial on pen making. Link below.


Pen turning tutuorial

Re: pen drilling question

Andrew Hilton

>Drill it first before turning it. This goes for the pens kits sold everywhere as well as the truely advanced custom made pens as well.

You can drill the material on the lathe by holding the wood in a chuck or whatever you want and a Jacobs chuck w/ drill in the tailstock but I don't prefer that at all. For craft shows and demos it works though.

For my production runs, I use a small drillpress to drill pens dozens at a time (I drill a few dozen, turn, then drill a few dozen more, etc.). There are some jigs out there that you can use to hold your material blanks straight up but you can also make your own. Make a corner block that's perfectly verticle and attach it to your drillpress table. Put your material blank in the corner of that verticle corner block jig and put a clamp to it. Drill. Done.

Or, you can much easier just use a wooden jaw clamp. Cut a 90degree notch on either side of the inside of the jaws where the material blank will fit into, and tighten the clamp around it. Make sure that the material blank isn't sitting completely flush with the bottom of the clamp so that when you clamp it together, only the bottom clamp faces are touching the flat table surface. You won't have problems with an uneven bottom of the material blank messing with you that way.

No jig in the world is going to keep the bit from wondering or even out a warped material blank, however. It can be held perfectly verticle and you'll still not get a perfect hole on both ends of the blank every time.

The above probably doesn't make too much sense without pictures.

Re: pen drilling question

EagleS.C.

>Even if you drill at a perfect 90* you will need a pen mill

So true !!

Fred in NC

>The end of the barrel must be square when it goes on the mandrel. Otherwise when the nut is tightened, the rod will bow a little. This will result in off-centered tubes, and poor fit.