Sawzall
Member
I am pretty new at turning pens as I have only been doing it since just before Christmas. Since then I have turned about 75 pens. I have made several different styles and used different woods and acrylics. Recently I tried the Rockler Flat Top Pen kit. My first try was with a piece of Cocobolo. Everything was going great until the last step of assembly. The directions say to "take the entire pen and press fit assembly into Pen Cap until Brass Clip Bushing is flush. This presses the stud end of the Brass Clip Bushing into the Twist Mechanism which properly seats it in the pen cap". For some reason I could not get the pen to press together properly. I followed the directions to the letter, the blanks were cut to exact specification the tubes were trimmed just a touch to make them flush with the blank etc. While press fitting it would get to a point where it would not go any farther but not be all the way flush. Long story short I blew out 3 kits and a blank trying to figure out the problem. I pressed with enough force to blow out the threads on the Brass twist holder and the twist mechanism. It turns out that the Twist mechanism Rockler provides is too long for the kit. To fix this I took a twist mechanism and on my grinder I trimmed down about 3/16 to 1/4 inch off the end without the threads. Then I sanded the burrs and pressed the pen together. Works like a champ. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this problem but it took me 3 kits to figure it out. Hopefully this thread will save someone else the frustration and $$ I went through.
