Pen mill question

[Jamie]

I use my disc grinder to square blank ends. I have come in to a few pieces of suguaro cactus skeleton and if you have never seen one, they are just like a huge armature or skeleton for those big 70' high cactus out here in Az, the pieces I have are about 1 to 2" X 3/4 to 1" oval, 4' long and slightly curved with rough edges so you have to hit the center and square the edges with not much extra stock to work with. Today I screwed up 2 prime blanks because I didn't get the ends square. I need a pen mill, I think. I have a 7mm I have never used. My question is how do I get all the sizes to fit the diameters of all the odd size tubes I use? The ones I messed up were for a pre-ordered set of Americans. It seems like everything takes something differant. Any Ideas? Thanks.

 

[jaywood1207]

Make a sleeve that will go over the pen mill but inside the larger tubes. 1 way is to take a 7mm tube and glue it in some scrap wood and then turn it down to fit in the larger tubes. The other method is to use some delrin without the 7mm tube and a 1/4" hole in the centre and turn it down to fit inside the larger tubes. I have both and they both work.

 

[KenV]

I always seem to have some scraps or plain wood that works for this purpose. I like to make the sleeves a little longer than the shaft on the pen mill to cover the end of the mill. I cut tubes for gluing into the sleeves, though you do not need to use them. Just drill the holes with a "D" bit to skip the tubes.

Note that you need to only have two points with close fit to the pen blank hole. With the longer tubes I work to have close fits at the cutter end, near the middle, and near the outer end. The remainder can be cut away to provide more clearance and less friction.

Ancii art ___/-\_________/-\_________/-\___ for the profile where the high points are within a few thousands of the inside diameter of the blank.

 

[TellicoTurning]

Jamie,
I do same as above.. added 7mm tubes to scrap and turned to fit all the odd tubes I use...

About the Saguaro... are the ribs solid, I was under impression they were not. I have a couple of walking sticks I picked up at the Nature Museum in Tucson a few years back.. the thought has crossed my mind to see if I could do pen from them, but hate to lose my walking sticks... is there a source to get more of the ribs.. I thought it was illegal to harvest them now because of conservation concerns.

 

[Jamie]

Chuck, the ribs are solid but not very. I pre cut and drill the blanks then stabilize'em for a few days then let them dry well. They turn and polish great, although not the best looking wood, people seem to like it because it's hard to get. As you may know, they hang people out here in Arizona for messing with a saguaro cactus so all in all, to much time, risk and work to just throw away.

 

[Jamie]

Thank you all, I have done what you said and it worked out well.
Jamie

 

[Ron in Drums PA]

 

[Pipes]

I don't even own a penmill I just use my disc sander works for me .[]