Continental Pen bit??

[joefrog]

So, I'm in Woodcraft yesterday buying a few needed items, and I decide to splurge a bit and get a nicer-than-I-usually-buy pen kit, the Continental. Looks nice, and I thought it would be a good experiment to try with the blanks I just bought from "firewhatfire."

I haven't had a chance to turn it yet, and in looking at the instruction sheet, I see that it takes some ODD bit sizes. 12.5mm and 10.5mm? What gives?? I've never turned a pen with this size! Is there an equivalent, or am I stuck buying even more bits?

Buy Continental Rollerball Pen Kit Chrome at Woodcraft.com

 

[Andrew_K99]

FWIW the Continental (aka Atrax) uses the same drill bits as the Jr. Gent II, Jr. Statemen II, Jr Retro, Triton and others I believe.

If you ever intend to do any of those it is probably worth buying the right drill bits, if not you could probably get away with 'close enough'.

AK

 

[Paul in OKC]

Both of those sizes fall about smack in the middle of two fractional drill sizes. The 12.5 is .492, so on the small side you can drill 31/64 (.484) and see how close it is, or go bigger at 1/2". On the 10.5 it is .413, so low is 13/32 (.406), high is 27/64 (.422). Either way it is about .007-.008 to either side.

 

[Xander]

I made one of those just last week. Stick a caliper on the tubes and use a regular bit. No need to get the 'recommended' size bits.

 

[LL Woodworks]

For the 10.5mm (.4134") a "Z" letter bit is .413

 

[triw51]

Joe if you go to

IAP Library - General Reference there is a section on drill bits. I use this a lot when making pens with odd drill bit recomendations. I printed it out and have it in a plastic sleeve in my shop

 

[joefrog]

Thanks all!

 

[Carl Fisher]

Definitely worth it to have a 10.5 and 12.5, you'll find a bunch of kits that call for those bits as mentioned by Andrew above.

 

[GaryMGg]

Joel,
There are metric drill bit sets available.
You can get those included for less than the cost of just buying those two bits.