I blew up one, and that those prices, one was enough. I tried sawing off the corners with a cornering jig, but cornering jigs do not use the center line of the pen tube as their reference point. If the blank is irregularly shaped (and past a certain point, even the squarest blank is irregularly shaped) this removes stock, but not evenly.
I built a jig. It's crude at the moment but I have two refinements that I'll incorporate when I build the new one. I suppose it could be called a cornering jig, except that this jig uses a mandrel shaft and the bushings for whatever kit your doing to make the centerline of the pen tube the reference point for the corner cutting. My bandsaw has a laser guide and using this jig I can get pretty close to the bushings, "straighten out" the blank and remove enough material that I only have to use sand paper to take it down the rest of the way. If I make enough cuts, I can even use the band saw to round it out quite well before squaring the ends and putting it on the lathe.
The sanding is also part of the story. For rapid removal of the remaining stock, I use a 36 grit floor sanding paper, then 50 and 80 grit "Gator" paper, in succession. From there I go to 120 grit, yada, yada, yada ... Very rarely do I even have to put a chisel to it. Usually, it's only needed to round out whatever slight eccentricities might be left from the cornering process before sanding it down.
]
