I took some brass candle sticks to the metal lathe and made some ferrules and went to town on some Mahogany furniture legs that I had salvaged some time ago.  For the metal points I used pieces of commercial peg board hooks.  They were 12" long and I cut 6" off a bunch of them and tapered the cut off pieces at the lathe.  They commercial peg board hooks are hard so they don't bend under the weight of the merchandise.  The ferrules are a press fit onto the body and the metal points are a press fit into the brass and the wood.  One of them is designed to be what is called a bird cage awl.

 

 

I made a few smaller ones too.  They are appx. 4" overall.  I put a larger one on the left in the picture for comparison.  The one to the right is done with a sharpened drill bit.  Because of the flutes it didn't sharpen well.  I think it was a 9/64" bit and believe a 1/4" or larger bit would be better.  The middle one is a piece of a spring link saved from a shoe brake system on a pickup truck.  The left one is an allen wrench with the "L" cut off.  I sharpened these up at the grinder and used cut off .300 Winchester magnum bullet casings for the ferrules and made them press fits as the others.

 

 

 

Thaise are gorgeous, Dan!

 

Thanks, Dan for ingenious ideas and wonderful work.  Those are absolutely wonderful.  I have so old drill bits that should do just fine.  

Very nice work Dan! Is "work" the right word? To make something that gorgeous you must surely enjoy it?!

Beautiful.  Added to my list of tools I want to make for myself.  

Wow Dan ! Really nice work and I love the use of the rifle cases. 
Paul

2 hours ago, Steve Krumanaker said:

Very nice work Dan! Is "work" the right word? To make something that gorgeous you must surely enjoy it?!

 

I've always enjoyed making something useful out of items that could have easily gone to the trash.  It doesn't always work as planned but even then I never consider it work.  The icing on the cake comes when I manage to impress those who impress me.  Thanks for the complements everyone.

Incredible how clever you are, those really are fantastic.

You're the man, Dan!

You need to start your own line of tools. Those look great.

More of that great stuff you do. Love the idea of using the cartridge as a ferrel.