Hi,
Attempted my first kitless pen and ended up screwing up every single part. Section, body, and cap. Luckily the material I was planning on using for the cap and body can be salvaged for a re-try later.
Anyway, what I kept having an issue with was threading the tenons using a die.
On the section I used acrylic, and had less trouble. However, starting it was still an issue. I'm holding the die in a homemade fixture chucked in a Jacobs chuck. It's quite stable, so that's not an issue. I just can't seem to start threads right. On the acrylic, the beginning is rough, but then the threads cut fine so I just part off the nasty stuff. When I tried threading ebonite, the die ended up just grinding the tenon down, creating no threads to speak of. Plenty of lubricant was used. Any idea what's causing this?
I did some reading and found that dies are supposedly "designed to cut 75% of a thread", and so to make the tenon smaller than the intended thread diameter. I was using a 1/2" die, and the tenon was a couple thousandths under. Could that be the issue, and all I need to do is cut the tenon a little smaller?
Attempted my first kitless pen and ended up screwing up every single part. Section, body, and cap. Luckily the material I was planning on using for the cap and body can be salvaged for a re-try later.
Anyway, what I kept having an issue with was threading the tenons using a die.
On the section I used acrylic, and had less trouble. However, starting it was still an issue. I'm holding the die in a homemade fixture chucked in a Jacobs chuck. It's quite stable, so that's not an issue. I just can't seem to start threads right. On the acrylic, the beginning is rough, but then the threads cut fine so I just part off the nasty stuff. When I tried threading ebonite, the die ended up just grinding the tenon down, creating no threads to speak of. Plenty of lubricant was used. Any idea what's causing this?
I did some reading and found that dies are supposedly "designed to cut 75% of a thread", and so to make the tenon smaller than the intended thread diameter. I was using a 1/2" die, and the tenon was a couple thousandths under. Could that be the issue, and all I need to do is cut the tenon a little smaller?