Basics for me?
- Benchtop wood lathe (Ed recommendations are great, but specficially you want a Variable speed lathe...will give you more time to turn). You want to make sure its MT2 as most tooling supports this (and as the 1x8 taper you'll see everywhere)
- Bandsaw - So you can cut blanks and tubes
- Carbide Tools (Rockler has one specifically for pen making, but you can also go for their mini carbide tool kit instead. I did the latter as I didnt want to deal with sharpening the skew in the pen kit )
- Tailstock Drill Chuck (to save on having to get a drill press)
- Chuck with regular and pen jaws - Used it for on-lathe drilling but this is also standard and something you should have just in general too. Would recommend the Barracuda or Nova G3 (they have a set specifically for pens, which I bought and is wonderful, requires one hand to tighten, and will be a more stuck Chuck proof than the two hand C Series Chuck Penn State Industries sells).
- pen mandrel and pen saver for the tailstock. If you get the Nova Pen Chuck Set, the pen saver is included so you just need to get the mandrel, which you can find everywhere.
- Drills - For drilling the holes for tubes. For wood, I have these:
- Oh, and don't forget super glue (aka CA) glue!
Hope this helps.