Little portable tube cutter

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Edward Cypher

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Feb 8, 2011
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I made this little tube cutter to cut the 10 inch tubes available for most pen sizes. It travels well :smile:and does not require electricity, great for mobile homes or just sitting outdoors on a beautiful day like today was here in Colorado:biggrin:. Or at a Craftfair where electricity is sometimes at a premium. Hope you enjoy this.







A miterbox from the craft store and two clamps from HF and a piece of plywood and a piece of hard maple for the stop. Easy as pie.
 
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Handy solution, thanks for sharing.

I use a bench hook and a dozuki. The bench hook can be built entirely from small scraps that are laying around most shops. No clamps needed (so less stuff to carry around). It will grab on pretty much any edge...slight forward pressure with the left hand holds the blank and the bench hook firmly in place while the right hand does the sawing.

A bit of practice and you can quickly cut very close to straight and square. I have one of those little miter boxes but went back to my bench hook.

The longer blade of a dozuki allows for much longer strokes as well.

I typically glue the 10" tubes into drilled blanks before cutting...the dozuki slices right through the blank and tube since the modern, cheap saws have electro-hardened teeth. I have one saw dedicated for this purpose so the wear from the tubes (and from Trustone, etc) only affect that one saw.

My blanks are drilled before they're cut which lets me be pickier about how the top and bottom segments line up (how much gap to remove for the center band, etc). Most drill presses don't have the quill travel to make that work easily so I tracked one down with almost 5" of quill travel (and now there's a model with 6" if I recall correctly).
 
Edward Cypher said:
Sorry Jim but I am not familiar with a dozuki. Who makes a drill press with 5 inches or travel?? I would be interested in knowing. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

A dozuki is a type of Japanese handsaw...it has a very thin blade so it cuts with very little effort, cuts on the pull stroke (due to the very thin blade), and has a back on it to stiffen the blade (like a western-style dovetail saw exempt with a thinner blade and cutting on the pull instead of push stroke).

Mine has very fine teeth so it's easy to get it started and it cuts quickly.

Proper ones are hand made and cost accordingly. Cheap ones work fine for such crude purposes as trimming pen blanks/tubes for much less.

Woodcraft had one on sale a while back but even at full price, they're worth it in my opinion...the blade is replaceable but I haven't bothered and I've cut probably hundreds of pen blanks, tubes, brass rod, etc with mine.

Here's one example (my oldest one came from Japan Woodworker but they're now owned by Woodcraft so I'm posting one of Woodcraft's...no doubt Rockler, Highland Hardware, Garret Wade, etc etc have something comparable):

Buy Shinwa Dozuki 110/7029 Hand Saw "Z" at Woodcraft.com

As for the drill press is the Rikon 20" which has 4 3/4" of quill travel. I caught it on sale for a nice discount then later discovered Harbor Freight has an eerily similar model for a bit less (though I have no idea what, if anything, is different in Harbor Freight's version). Here's a link to the one I have:

Buy Rikon 20" Floor Drill Press, Model 30-240 at Woodcraft.com

I made-do with a Craftsman drill press for about 20 years prior to this one and literally gave away the Craftsman after using the Rikon a few times. Shortly after I bought the Rikon, Powermatic announced a drill press with 6" of quill travel...the price difference wasn't worth trying to exchange the Rikon but if I ever got a new drill press, the PowerMatic would be a serious contender:

Buy Powermatic 18" Drill Press, Model PM2800B at Woodcraft.com

Lowes carries a Porter Cable drill press with 4" of quill travel. That's not enough for some of the styluses and pens I like to make but it's also much cheaper than my Rikon. The Porter Cable at Lowes runs about $330.

I'd love to find a bench top drill press with non-trivial quill travel but nobody seems to make one. So, floor models are what I've used instead.

I've drilled on the lathe but really prefer the drill press.

Tim S.
 
From a cost standpoint, your approach and mine are pretty similar. Your photo shows two clamps that total about $35 plus $20 for the miter box/saw...total of about $55 (rounding off a bit to make the math easy...probably closer to $60 before tax).

The Dozuki I linked to list for $60 and the bench hook is typically made from shop scraps (similar to the backing plywood under your example). Two short pieces of 1x2 and a piece of plywood sized to suit...12-15" long by maybe 10" wide would be a fine start, a few screws (making sure NOT to put a screw in the bottom 1x2 right where your saw will some day slice into the plywood...yep, been there, done that). No clamps required during use.
 
Wow thanks for the education Jim. What is funny is I bought one of those saws from Woodcraft and have used it to cut through tenons on wands but never thought of using it for anything else. It hangs by my lathe, I've had it for over a year.

The price of the clamps was only about 10 dollars they are from HF. If I would have bought them at a woodworking store they would have been even more than your estimate.

I am going to have to try my saw but I don't think it has a stiffener plate at the back. And the blade is not changeable. Guess the next one I buy I will have to look for those things.

Thanks again Learned a lot.
 
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