FGarbrecht
Member
I am following Fred Brunings tutorial "How to make a 'kitless' pen", and am having some problems. I cast some 3/4" round alumilite blanks to practice on, drilled the centers with a center drill and turned them down to about 18 mm between centers. I mounted the larger blank (the barrel) in a collett chuck and turned a 1 cm tenon to a diameter of 12 mm. I then cut a thread on the tenon on the lathe with a 12 mm x 0.75 die mounted on a die holder. So far so good. I then placed a threaded delrin collar on the newly cut thread to stabilize it. I drilled out the center with a 7 mm bit to a depth of about 3 inches (that went fine), then came back with a bit sized for my section thread (9 mm x .75 tap). (It's a 'P' bit, a little over 8.2 mm diameter), and the tenon fragmented immediately. Tried again, recut a tenon and threaded it, and tried drilling again, same result. Not sure how to do this now. In the tutorial he cuts an even larger internal thread (10 mm) so there is even less wall thickness to work with.
Any suggestions?
Any suggestions?