Pen Turning | How To - 311

hey folks like guys doing hope you are all having a great day today now I know that there are so many videos on the internet about how to turn a pen on a lathe but it's one of my more commonly requested lathe topic videos so here we go we're going to turn a pen on a lathe I'll walk you through the entire process show you what you need and it's incredibly simple when you first get a lathe turn a couple pens you can make them and sell them or make them and keep them whatever you want but just turn a couple pens it's a quick win project it'll get you familiar with a couple things on the lathe and it's not intimidating at all it's not like a big platter or something that's easily screwed up pens are so small so simple so easy anybody can do it so the very first thing let's talk about what we'll actually need to turn a pen and the very first thing there is a lathe all of the products that I'm about to show you are from rockler Woodworking and Hardware and that's because they're a partner of mine and they supported this video and provided all this stuff for me to show to you that being said you don't need 100% of everything that I'm going to show you I just want to give you guys some options so the very first thing that I really recommend is a beginner's pen turning kit and the key word there is not beginners the key word there is kit this has everything you need to get up and running turning some pens you can buy all this stuff individually but you'll end up saving some money plus having a little tote to have everything location to put everything when it's all said and done if you go ahead and buy a kit instead so not a necessity but a big recommendation inside this kit we have a pen mandrel and this is the section over here that will go inside the head stock of your lathe the wood will go on to this mandrel and be secured over here this is what will actually secure the wood to the lathe as you turn it keep in mind that this particular one is an MT two taper that's Mike Tom number two taper and mt 2 taper that's because my lathe that has an MT two taper in the headstock not all of them do though some of them have an MT one or something else really so verify what taper your headstock has before by one of these because an mt2 won't work in every single lathe we also have a little bottle of CA glue which will we will use to glue the tubes into the wood and I'll show you that in just a little bit this is a pen milk it and this will allow you to trim the wood perfectly at the end of the wood perfectly ninety degrees to one of the tubes I sometimes use this sometimes don't I'll show you a another method that you could use a table saw sled instead of this this kit has three pen kits themselves the this is the mechanical part of the pen what you will wrap the wood around you know all of these in this particular kit are slimline pen kits this is the easiest pen out there to turn it's very very simple nothing complicated all three bushings are the same size and the Pens themselves the wood part of this pens themselves aren't complicated just very simple straight lines I recommend this for a quick and easy pen or if you want to batch out a bunch of super super easy fast pens then go a slim line I've probably turned I don't know the exact number 50 to 100 pens and all but three or four of them have been slim line and that's because it's just incredibly simple nothing to keep up with nothing to worry about as far as the bushings be in certain sizes and yeah just the easiest route to go now when turning a slimline pen you obviously need slimline bushings that's what is in this kit right here these bushings there's three all three are the same size and on the mandrel it will go bushing wood bushing wood bushing and basically you surround the wood with a bushing and you turn the wood down to the diameter of the bushing to know when to stop super simple these sometimes get chewed up the more you sand and accidentally hit them with stuff so they're inexpensive to get a couple of these extra or to replace them down the road this kit also has three gorgeous pen blanks which I was pleasantly surprised with this is an olive wood olive wood blank which I'm really looking forward to turning this particular one is a bloodwood and it's got some pretty gnarly grain so that should be pretty pretty awesome and what do you know bubinga I love saying bubinga so we got three pen blanks as far as the pieces of wood and everything else needed to turn handy little kit highly recommend it you also need something to to drill a hole perpendicular to the pen blank so this is a small pen link that I have cut in half and I would typically at this point drill a hole through it to insert the tube I have in the past used these wooden clamps all the time as kind of like a drill press vise you just need to make sure you are perpendicular to the drill or to the table so you drill a nice square hole and beyond this clamp you can use a clamp like this to press the pen together once it's all done you insert the pen assembly and then press it together a simple clamp like this will get by no problem these two it's probably your least expensive route but for convenience there's also something like this which is the Rockler pen press drilling jig and it's it's a press as well as a vise for the welt for the drill press a press for assembly as well as a vise for the drill press so after you have the entire pen assembled you can back this out and use this to assemble the pen and then also while you have it on the drill press table you can use it to hold the blank perpendicular to the the bed of the drill press and drill your hole this is what I would consider something like a convenience item it's definitely helpful to have something like this but if you're on a budget you can get by with a couple of these smaller clamps we also want some sandpaper to go through the sanding grits to take the finish from a rough finish off of the tool and to up to like in this case we go from 150 to 600 grit before using some type of finish and for a finish I've always used this combination this is EEE triple-e ultra shine and this is like a well there you go there's the label of it it's a paste that kind of gets rid of any type of tooling marks and is great at filling the grain just a little bit before you use some type of finish and I've had great results using this in the past keep in mind that this has an expiration date on it so this doesn't last forever however this bottle will last you quite a while because just a little bit of this is needed for finish inside the pen kit we have the ink cartridge we have the tip of the pen the lower tube the center ring or bushing whatever you want to call this decorative ring and the upper tube luckily in the slimline kit both the lower and upper tubes are the same length so that's very convenient we also have the twist mechanism which is sometimes referred to as the transmission and this changes the location of the tip whether it's pushed out or pushed in we also have the clip up here at the top as well as the cap now the first thing we need to do is cut our blanks in half drill our hole and then glue in these tubes but before we do it's very important for woods that have grain going all kinds of crazy directions to first make a line similar to this and what we did here is just basically from the center of the blank in the left and right direction I just struck a line that way when we cut this in half when we put it on the lathe we just make sure that our lines are in the same orientation they are right here and that way we have good grain consistency if you have grain if you have green that's nice and straight all the way across and the color match is pretty similar you don't really have to worry about that but this has some pretty interesting pretty gnarly grain so any any help we can get via this line will be beneficial to make sure we have a nice grain consistency from the top to the bottom of the pen using a table saw crosscut sled I can cut all of the blanks in half I can cross cut them in half and then use the inside face that we just cut up against the stop block on the sled to cut all of our pieces just a little bit longer than the upper and lower tubes with all the blanks cut slightly longer than the tubes we can put them in the vise at the drill press and drill a seven millimeter hole as close to centre as possible it doesn't have to be 100% dead center but really close is what we're after there's a couple really important things to note before glueing the tube inside the blank number one you need to scuff up the surface of the tube just grab some sandpaper grab a hold of it twist it around quite a bit do all that as necessary so that you are left with a really scuffed up - what that's going to do is it's going to give you a lot of scratches for the glue to really grab a hold of and that's what you want now the second thing is once glue is applied to the outside of this tube that means it is now a one-way street into this the hole of the blank and the reason being is if there's glue on the outside here and you insert it a little bit and then for whatever reason back out a little bit and then push in forward what you're doing is you're you're adding glue to the inside of the hole on the blank and backing off a little bit and then the tube will scrape all of that glue off of the inside of the hole and put it inside the tube you don't want any glue inside the tube so it's a one-way street just put glue on here and then twist as you insert it all the way through so this is medium CA glue and we'll put a little bit on the bottom actually quite a bit on the bottom here you'll determine how much is too much and actually I think that was too much because I'm dripping all over the place and then as we insert the tube we will twist it back and forth until it is really close to being all the way flush and then just so my fingers don't get sticky I'll push it on a piece of scrap wood and there you go the tube is perfectly flushed with this end of the blank and then we can use the mill to flush up this side this is the pen mill that was in the kit and it does two things the first thing is this this tip right here is shaped in such a way that it will clean out the inside of the tube if you have any superglue down there or CA glue inside the tube this point right here will remove but if you were careful up to this point this this shouldn't be an issue and the second thing that this does is these teeth up here as this is inside the tube these teeth will mill the top surface down flush with the top of the barrel [Music] one way to get around not having a pen mill is to cut the blanks to the exact same length as the tubes before drilling the hole in the blank now this works but if you go this route you need to make sure that you drill the hole exactly perpendicular to the end faces the loading sequence for the mandrel is bushing wood bushing wood and then one last bushing now the bushings here they provide the reference for the outside diameter needed to line up with the pen kit hardware again make sure that the blank is put on the lathe with the centers aligned so that you maintain your aney consistency it's important to keep these in the same orientation when they are moved from the lathe as well to hold the pen blanks in place you can either use the brass retaining nut included with the mandrel and steady the mandrel with a live Center or you can remove the brass retaining nut altogether and change out the live Center for a mandrel saver and that's a live Center that slides over the mandrel and applies pressure directly to the bushing if you go the traditional wood turning tool route the only tool you will need is a roughing gouge with the lathe spinning as fast as it will go the first step is to use the gouge to turn this square blank into a cylinder now pens are a great first project for the lathe because it's a very safe project if you are too aggressive with the tool the wood will most often just grab the tool and and stop and then spin on the mandrel and if for whatever reason the you know the chip or the blank chips off or even and falls apart it won't be a crazy eventful situation because there's such a small amount of wood involved you can continue reducing the diameter to its final size or switch over to tapering the ends down to the bushing diameter it doesn't really matter which order you choose here as the end result is the same not all pens need to be the same shape though some require larger diameter or longer cylinders and that's especially true if a cap is being made but these are slimline pens and just like the name implies I'm going to make them slim and with very little detail these pens allow the wood grain to while the talking more so than the design of the turning I also wanted to show a carbide tool in action so for the entire olive wood pen I used a square radius carbide tool and because this tool has a wide contact area with the wood it's really easy to get a smooth face and gradual transitions that are free of tool marks the overall shape is the same and it's just as simple as going back and forth with the shape established you can work your way through the sanding grits and I like to sand a little bit with the lathe spinning slowly and then stop the lathe and sand with the direction of the grain and what great you start with is it's pretty much up to you but generally speaking the sharper the cutting tool and the smoother movements that you make while using the tool the less sanding you'll have to do these didn't require much sanding at all now there's a bunch of different products and methods to use when finishing a turning and I've turned somewhere between 5200 pens and I've always started with triple e ultra shine and then finished with crystal coat simply because it's it's really fast and it's really easy for the ultra shine I'll apply it to the wood with or without the lathe spinning and use a slow speed if you apply it with a lathe turning also try to avoid the bushings as much as possible because it will turn black and stain the wood especially on lighter colored woods wipe off the excess and use a small piece of paper towel or just regular paper to buff the blanks I like to get as close as I can to the bushings and then work my way back towards the middle after that a layer of crystal coat can be applied for a greater shine and higher water and wear resistance it's applied and buffed out the exact same way but very very little of this product is required it's a heat activated friction finish so a little heat when buffing is a good thing but don't get the blanks too hot because high heat will damage the glue bond underneath the wood I apologize that it's you know a little bit out of focus here but you can see the sheen difference between just the Tripoli ultra shine versus the Tripoli ultra shine plus the crystal coat finally the pens can be assembled also making sure to keep track of the grain direction the pen tip is pressed in first followed by the twist mechanism and there is a depth line or kind of like a ring marked out on and the twist mechanism to let you know how far to press it in at this point you can insert the cartridge and then test the movement to see if the cartridge is sticking out far enough from the tip then add the ring followed by the upper tube and then the clip and cap are pressed on the other end to finish off the pen and that's that's it that's pretty much it pens are incredibly easy to make and make great quick win projects that you can give out as gifts and if you've never made one I suggest giving it a try now you don't need a huge lathe and there are a lot of inexpensive mini lathes on the market to choose from and really if you don't want to buy one you might be able to find a makerspace or someone local who would be willing to give you a hand also thank you to rockler Woodworking and Hardware for supporting this video and being an active part of the woodworking community the more people we have interested in woodworking the better it is for all of us if you are interested in any of the products I used in this video you can learn more with these links in the description of this video check out my website at JS custom creations comm for almost a thousand written articles including the article for this video and while you're there be sure to sign up for my email newsletter to stay up to date with everything that I publish I publish a lot more content on my website than what is published here on my main YouTube channel thanks for watching and have a great day