Paul Downes
Member
I have only turned 5 snakewood pens to date with 2 shattered blanks at the onset. One while drilling and the other while using a pen mill. I posted earlier requesting advice on how to prevent wrecking the blanks and have since had 0 failures. The advise was to boil the blanks for a while before drilling and also microwaveing was suggested. What I have been doing is dripping water into the hole as I slowly drill the blank, being careful to back the drill out often. I believe,(with limited experiance) that the water improves the machinability of this hard and expensive wood considerably. The other thing I do is square the blanks up with a sander on a sanding jig that keeps the blank square to the sanding disk.