That I have not been making as many pens as I once was, and here is why.

I'm tired of putting money into buying great looking pen kits only to have them messed up by the barrel trimmer, and thus only able to use them myself or give them away to people that need a pen to write with.

The 2 piece barrel pens are the worst. They just are not getting trimmed correctly no matter how much time I put into sharpening the trimmer. No matter how much pressure I do or don't put on the trimmer, when it trims the blank, it does one of 2 things, it either rips the blank in half and then throws the tube to the floor, or it cuts valleys and peaks in the blank around the tube.This last bit is what it mostly does. When this happens, and you try to put the pen together, there are noticeable gaps in the wood as it meets the hardware of the pen

I have tried several different pens and blanks and even different trimmer heads and sharpened them all before using.

Any ideas?

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Charles Nicholls
Site Host
nicholls61@att.net
http://www.nichollswoodworks.com
This website is new so it doesn't have much to it yet but you are welcome to take a look

Some woods like ebony and other hard woods do not work well when heated such as while being trimmed. Which ever method you use to trim your barrels, the tube/wood assembly and the trimmer guide must be square to one another. Also I haven't had any issues after I switched to using epoxy for bonding the wood to the brass tube. Once cured I trim the barrel on the lathe instead of the drill press. There are lots of articles on IAP that give great instructions for various methods of trimming the barrels.

Charles,

You know I'm not an experienced pen turner. My first thought was similar results when drilling metal with a large bit. There is often a vibration/chatter if the speed of the drill is too fast. A video I watched shows a pen maker trimming the barrels with a battery powered hand drill- which usually operate at a low speed. Again, just thinking out loud.

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Lew Kauffman-
Wood Turners Forum Host

Time traveler. Purveyor of the world's finest custom rolling pins!

Are you sure the flukes are square to the trimmer's center line. Out of the box you shouldn't have to sharpen the cutter. The barrel trimmer I use has been in use for 5 years and I haven't had to sharpen it and I've turned a lot of pens. Maybe your feed rate is too fast. 

OK, still thinking out loud here. How do you hold the blank when trimming it? In the video mentioned, the author was holding  it in his hand. I thought that was not the best idea.

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Lew Kauffman-
Wood Turners Forum Host

Time traveler. Purveyor of the world's finest custom rolling pins!

I put the blank in my chuck and then the trimmer in the tail stock and advance the trimmer with the quill shaft. 

Still thinking out loud here.

I may have misinterpreted your procedure/equipment and if so, I apologize in advance. I gather from your descriptions that you may have a Jacobs chuck you can mount in your head or tail stock. If that is true, maybe this type of chuck pen turning chuck could be added to your standard head stock chuck and then place the Jacobs chuck, with the barrel trimmer in the tail stock. Move the tail stock with the barrel trimmer to engage to pilot shaft in the pen tube and move the trimmer close to the end of the blank. Lock the tail stock on the ways. Turn on the lathe at a low speed and advance the trimmer using the tail stock hand wheel. This procedure is safe- no hands holding the pen blank. It also assures the trimmer and blank stay collinear therefore the trimmer should meet the blank squarely and finally, because of the thread advance of the tail stock wheel, a consistent pressure against the blank should be achieved.

Maybe you have already tried this and found it unsuccessful.

Charles Nicholls said:

I hold it in my hand too, like this,

then use a 3/8" drill with trimmer mounted to trim the blanks with the wrench resting on my leg.. It may not be the best way, but I find that trimming on the lathe is extremely dangerous. All would be fine if the trimmer never hung on the blank while trimming on the lathe, but too many times it DID hang and nearly stripped flesh off my fingers. It could even rip finger nails off. We always advise people to not wear rings while working on a lathe, so why then do people think that holding a stationary blank up against a moving trimmer on a lathe is a good thing ? not you but other people that actually do such things. It's just not safe because there is no kill switch if something goes amiss. This is my safety point of the day

Lewis Kauffman said:

One question. Is the pilot shaft on your trimmer the same size as the inside diameter of the brass tube? In order to trim the barrel properly the pilot shaft on the trimmer must be the same diameter as the I.D. as the tube. It should fit in the tube with no slop. That could explain the ridges and uneven trimming. 

Great news, Charles!!!

Lets hope the real thing works as well as the test piece!

Charles Nicholls said:

Update: I did try the Jacobs chuck on the lathe with the dedicated pen blank chuck pictured above. I used a sacrificial blnk of Cedar since I have a lot of it and it did perfectly trim the blank! ( you really need a happy dance icon here John lol).

You do have to be very careful not to advance the quill too far or it will indeed start chewing up the tube with no effort at all.

So if anyy of you have similar issues of pen blanks getting chatter mount the thing in the lathe and do the trimming there as above and it should be fine.

i'll have to make up a real set for trimming later and see if the results are the same.

Thanks guys for helping me out on this, this is a dilemma that has been going on for a while.

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Charles Nicholls
Site Host
nicholls61@att.net
http://www.nichollswoodworks.com
This website is new so it doesn't have much to it yet but you are welcome to take a look