I guess I didn't know any better the first couple of times I turned the rattlesnake blanks from BB. I just stuck em on the lathe and used a very sharp round nosed scrapper and took off the corners with very , very, did I say very light cuts. Once I had the corners off I used my very, very, sharp skew and turned them to size. That was the first two I did. The next two a Baron and a Cigar I used the same method with my round nosed scrapper but had a catch with my skew and blew out first the top blank on the Baron and then the bottom barrel of the Cigar. Luckily the two different skins matched fairly well so I used the lower barrel of the Baron for the lower barrel of thec Cigar, which are almost the same size(the Baron is just a hair bigger)I simply glued the fittings into the barrel and salvaged one pen from two losses.By the way did you know that the tubes of those blanks are painted green? [:0] DAMHIKT