First of all you only get to see the success case not the cases that ended up in a shoe box. We all have them. The blanks that ended up too plain, too whatever that makes them just a wasted blank or a wasted tube. No one mentions them but we all have them.
I use to do a lot of high number production work. An order for fifty pens of one type was small. When you get into large numbers you not a hobby turner but a production turner. Different world, with less satisfaction and tons more headaches. You learn to hate one pen style at a time because you do it over and over again until you hate it.
The time savings is in doing repeated steps as efficiently as possible. In fact if you are not highly efficient you will never finish a order. It is all numbers, time and thinking in advance. We all know all the steps in making a pen but have you thought how to do it efficiently? Not likely because you want to enjoy the process not bang them out like eggs on a layer farm. Here is how I do large orders with a rough time estimate.
You need hundreds of blanks to work with, maybe a thousand for large orders. Your selection of blanks the best blanks makes the entire output possible. If you have a order for 50 pens you start out selecting 60-65 of your best blanks for the job. Draw a line, witness marks, on two sides of the blanks for matching later. Two sides because you can see one of the two sides easily when you pick the up later and find your witness marks for faster work. Figure 30 minutes to find and select 60-65 nice blanks.
Then go to the band saw and cut each blank to length using your sled and put both blanks together with a rubber band to hold them. Place them is a box to keep the entire group together. Figure half an hour to cut all the blanks.
Now go to the drill press. Drill 120-130 half blanks. Making sure that the witness marks are used to keep both halves aligned in your pen drilling press. I use a small waste block under every one to prevent blowouts. Then put the two half blanks back together with the rubber band. Repeat over and over again. Figure 30-45 minutes for the drilling.
Now you get to glue the tubes in the blanks. I used Gorilla glue so I did not scuff every tube to give the glue a surface to grab. That had to save me ten seconds on every blank. You still have to load the tube surface with glue, work the tube into the blanks several times to get even glue coverage. Then wrap the pair back in the rubber band. This time I went around both blanks the long ways to use the rubber band to keep the tubes from extruding as the glue dries. Put on a long flat area so the glue can dry. Another 20 minutes glueing the lot.
Then you get to trim the blanks by your method of choice. I use to use a drill press vise to hold the blanks and a end mill trimmer in the drill press. It took half a minute per set of blanks. 30 minutes if all went well 60 if real hard wood which takes much more time than say a soft spalted maple.
Then I went over to the Woodwrite lathe and set the blanks on the production mandrel. It is a automatic lathe and will round the blanks into a perfect cylinder after four or five passes. You do not have to watch the process. I just wanted the blanks turned round and maybe 75% if the way down to the final size. While the blank was turning I would be working on my Delta lathe on another blank so the time spent here was free because I was working on a second pen. Well it still takes time to mount, set and run the lathe so figure two to three minutes moving blanks around and set up time.
Then they are taken off the Woodwrite and put on my Delta lathe. Then the real hand work of turning is done. When you turn the same pen a few hundred times you can turn on down to 1-2mm of the final size in a very short time. Simple pens take five to ten minutes and complex ones take ten minute to an hour. We all get bogged down sometimes. Figure ten minutes as a good average.
Sand as needed with the factory steel bushings. I use to dry sand all blanks to 800-1200, then I found MM and it took even more step. EEE if you like, sanding sealer if needed based on the type of wood. Another few minutes, maybe a lot more. Call it five minutes in a perfect world.
Then off the Delta and onto the old Delta lathe in the "clean area" that only finishing is done. Might need five or ten coats of finish. May find that after five it just does not look like you expect. Then you have to decide if you will be better sanding it down, sanding it all off and starting over or decide the blanks is never gong to be a keeper and chuck it in the trash can. If it turns out perfect and the finish is all that you hope for you place the finished pen blanks in a plastic bang and set aside. Call it 10 minutes on a good day and 30 on a bad day.
Now you have perfectly finished pen blanks that need to be assembled. First check everyone of them again in better light. Do not be surprised if you fine a third of them need more finishing or have some here to fore unseen blemish. It is either redo them to correct the flaw or pitch them. Blanks and tubes are cheaper than pen kits but by now you have a real major investment in time in each semi finished pen blank. It is a judgment call, but sometimes you just have to admit the wood wins again. I finished one blanks four times before I gave up. Hard to quit sometimes. If perfect you put them together and re-polish as needed. Then into the display case or into the pen box they go. Another one or two in a perfect case ten or more sometimes.
So the pen order of 50 pens takes me well over 1725 minutes or a little over 28 hours by my quick estimation. 40 or more in some cases. Call it a pen every 30 minutes. Think my times are too slow for each step? I just finished a order for 175 pens for the local high school and It took almost a hundred hours for the job. Worse I donated the blanks, kits and time. The only thing they paid for was laser engraving. The things we do for our kids.
So when you hear people claim a pen takes an hour or more they are working fairly quickly. When they claim it takes three, four or five hours they are working on a hard pen style or they are working at the Federal Governments speed.
honest ... I DID! The mackerel were running that day! Had to go door to door giving them away! I don't even LIKE fish!
