Jdubfudge
Member
So I turned my first pen today and it turned out way better than expected. Let's see if anyone can guess the wood I used. As a hint, I'll give you two clues. First is that I live in Hawaii and I like to use local woods for my wood projects. Second is that I didn't realize the black stuff on the guides should not have been there so when I sanded the pen it got the black stuff in the grooves. So here's the pen...
And here's the process:
As I mentioned I wanted to get into pen turning because I like working with wood. Half my furniture in my house is built by me. But I'm active duty military and time lately hasn't really allowed me to build any furniture. I figured pen turning would allow me to continue working with wood with the free time I have. So I went online and decided on a lathe from PSI. After a couple weeks of deciding if I wanted to make the purchase, I bit the bullet and added the lathe with accessories to my cart. Then I found out the hard way how expensive it is to ship a lathe to Hawaii. $700 expensive. So my pen turning dreams went up in smoke. Until last week I was on craigslist and picked up a new in box Jet 1015 for a few bucks cheaper than Amazon and it came with a drill chuck. I was sold.
Today I finally got the spare hour (I have a two toddlers) and decided to pull it out of the box, set it up and turn it on. I wasn't planning on turning a pen but on thing led to the next.
This is the wood I used. Can you guess what it is? I pulled it out of my scrap pile and looked at it.... not even close to square and width and height were about an 1/8" off. I figured why not. Let's see how well that drill chuck really works. So I attached the centering chuck and the drill chuck and went to work.
Whole crap, without even measuring anything or marking anything I made my first hollow dowel! Way easier than I thought it would be. This is where I planned to stop. Then I though why not, let's make the pen. So I went to dinner, came back, gave the kids a bath and put them to sleep.
Once asleep I went to the garage. I didn't purchase the drill bit to flush the blank so I used my belt sander. Actually pretty easy and I think I'll just stick to that for now.
Then I threw the pens on mandrel and started turning. This was a lot quieter than I thought it would be. But as mentioned above I did get the blank dirty. I also pressed too hard at one time and cut into the wood a little bit. I think I saved it in sanding though. I didn't have CA glue so I just finished it with BLO and some wax. Maybe I'll finish it with CA later. Maybe not and keep it is a reminder from where I started.
Any who, I'm hooked.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
And here's the process:
As I mentioned I wanted to get into pen turning because I like working with wood. Half my furniture in my house is built by me. But I'm active duty military and time lately hasn't really allowed me to build any furniture. I figured pen turning would allow me to continue working with wood with the free time I have. So I went online and decided on a lathe from PSI. After a couple weeks of deciding if I wanted to make the purchase, I bit the bullet and added the lathe with accessories to my cart. Then I found out the hard way how expensive it is to ship a lathe to Hawaii. $700 expensive. So my pen turning dreams went up in smoke. Until last week I was on craigslist and picked up a new in box Jet 1015 for a few bucks cheaper than Amazon and it came with a drill chuck. I was sold.
Today I finally got the spare hour (I have a two toddlers) and decided to pull it out of the box, set it up and turn it on. I wasn't planning on turning a pen but on thing led to the next.
This is the wood I used. Can you guess what it is? I pulled it out of my scrap pile and looked at it.... not even close to square and width and height were about an 1/8" off. I figured why not. Let's see how well that drill chuck really works. So I attached the centering chuck and the drill chuck and went to work.
Whole crap, without even measuring anything or marking anything I made my first hollow dowel! Way easier than I thought it would be. This is where I planned to stop. Then I though why not, let's make the pen. So I went to dinner, came back, gave the kids a bath and put them to sleep.
Once asleep I went to the garage. I didn't purchase the drill bit to flush the blank so I used my belt sander. Actually pretty easy and I think I'll just stick to that for now.
Then I threw the pens on mandrel and started turning. This was a lot quieter than I thought it would be. But as mentioned above I did get the blank dirty. I also pressed too hard at one time and cut into the wood a little bit. I think I saved it in sanding though. I didn't have CA glue so I just finished it with BLO and some wax. Maybe I'll finish it with CA later. Maybe not and keep it is a reminder from where I started.
Any who, I'm hooked.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
