Got it. Yup, cleaned it out. Though it wasn't all that dirty. I don't have a brush so curled up a tube of paper towel real tight, ran that through with a stick, it came out a little gray but not what I would think would alter the angle of the taper. Did that a few times.
Then took the mandrel all apart, all looked fine but wiped it down anyway.
Put it all back and dang if it wasn't still wobbly.
Well… ha. Teaching myself tricks as I go here.
Put it all in very loose, pulled the tailstock into position, gave it a quick test turn, looked true. THEN tightened everything down. That did the trick. I wasn't doing that before.
SO… I had a pen in the works, some bloodwood, had a nice shape going, cut a few bands in and glued in some malachite chips, (real fine.) IT was on the sanding and trimming of that when something must have gone askew. I should have stopped and figured it out then but NOOOOO. Gotta finish. Dumb dumb dee dumb. So my nice straight even bands looked like cross cut wood grain. Now that I have the thing running straight again and it was most obvious the pen barrels are way off balance. thought I'd fix my pen. Fortunately it was still pretty thick so should have been fixable.
Well… a whole chunk of wood came flying out. NUTS!!!!!
Well… the other half is ok. Maybe at some point I'll turn that into a keyring or something.
Meanwhile started a new pen. Going to try the same thing only this time if my mandrel starts getting off, I stop and fix. Even a little bit matters.