Hi all,

 

For those of you who make pens, I have a question. What do you use to trim up the blanks?

 

I ask because I use a standard barrel trimmer on the end of my drill, while this does work, I do lose a lot of blanks to snag/breaks, or the trimmer just sits and spins until it finally burns it's way to where i want it to be. There is the rare occasion where it does work fine but that is usually because the wood at that time is very soft to start with, Thanks for any ideas you may have.

 

 

Here is what I use.  It is a home made sanding jig.  Just a pice of 90 degree angle with a 1/4-20 bolt with the head cut off.  There are commercial jigs out there but mine seems to work fine.

 

I do use a pen mill on acrylic and antler.  Make sure yours is good and sharp.  I use a flat diamond hone on the back.  Just give it a few strokes and it is good to go.

 

One other thing you can try is saturating the ends with thin CA before you mill.  It helps keep the blank from splitting.

Here are a couple more pictures of the jig.

Charles, I have used the disc sander just using a miter gauge in the slot and pushing the blank up against the disc.

 

I like Greg's solution.

 

I have also put my pen blank in the pen vise and used the drill press with the Pen Mill. I wasn't too thrilled using the drill and trying to hold the blank in my other hand. A couple of catches and it tears up the fingers.

I guess if you had a chuck with a set of pen jaws and a jacobs chuck for the tail stock you could mount the blank in the chuck and put the sanding disk in the drill chuck and ease it up to the blank and let it sand it from there. You would be sanding in the middle of the disc so I am not sure how good the sanding would be.

 

Same thing if you have a chuck you could mount the blank and them put the pen mill in the jacobs chuck and turn it square on the lathe, but boy that would scare me to death unless you could really slow the lathe down.

Do you have an extra faceplate?  If you do mount it to a piece of MDF and turn it round.  It dosn't have to be very large.  I would think 5" or so.  That way you can use precut PSA sand paper.  Stick a sanding disk to it either PSA or with contact cement.  Chuck your pen pill shaft into a Jacobs chuck mounted in the tail stock.  Slide you pen blank on the shaft and move your tail stock close to the disk.  Spin up the lathe and slide the blank along the shaft until it contacts the disk.  Repeat as necessary.

The draw backs I see are the lack of surface speed of the sanding disk as you are only using the very center.  Also you are going to wear out only a small part of the paper. 

By the way this is a Jacobs chuck

I guess I should have paid mor attention to John's suggestion.  He is saying about the same thing.

Just thinking out loud here.

Mount a round disk of MDF to to a faceplate with sand paper affixed to it on the head stock.

Make a flat plate to fit across the bed of your lathe. 

Mount a square piece that just fits between the ways to the bottom of it.  It needs to just fit between the ways but will need to slide along the ways. 

Mount an angle bracket off set from center on the top.  Mount the 1/4-20 in the bracket.

You need to be sure that the 1/4- 20 is square to the sanding disk in horizontal and vertical directions.

To square slip your blank over the 1/4-20.  slide it up to your disk and sand.  You will still only be sanding in one spot, but it will be toward the edge.

 

Check out this article on sharping a pen mill.  A sharp pen mill will go a long way to prevent splintering.  It will also allow it to cut insted of burn.

 

http://www.penmakersguild.com/articles/penmillsharpening1.pdf