press fitting pen parts

[aggromere]

I always see stuff about pen presses or vises to assemble pens. Am i missing something.

I bought (dont remember where it was long ago) two delrin MT2 fixtures with rubber gaskets to hold them firmly in the head and tailstock. One of them is slightly concave to hold something curved or bumpy, the other one is flat. I use my lathe to assemble all my pens. Does anyone else do that, or does everyone use a pen press. I would like to know, cause I don't want to miss out on anything that would be better.

 

[ed4copies]

Peter,

I use an arbor press. Because it is vertical and gravity holds the parts where I want them, mostly.

Horizontal pen presses require more hands than god allotted to me.

 

[MAB11]

I use the press from Penn State. (Item #: PENPRESS4)
It's spring loaded so you can align your parts/grain in place before pressing together. It's also cast iron so it's pretty beefy.

 

[JBCustomPens]

I use the press from Penn State. (Item #: PENPRESS4)
It's spring loaded so you can align your parts/grain in place before pressing together. It's also cast iron so it's pretty beefy.

Same here except I mounted mine vertical on a wall. WAY EASIER!

 

[MAB11]

I use the press from Penn State. (Item #: PENPRESS4)
It's spring loaded so you can align your parts/grain in place before pressing together. It's also cast iron so it's pretty beefy.

Same here except I mounted mine vertical on a wall. WAY EASIER!

Yeh, I clamp mine in the vise.

 

[jskeen]

I use the smaller of my drill presses as a pen press 90% of the time, as the runout on it is horrible. turned a dowel about 5/8 with a step down to just under 1/2 to go in the chuck and a flat piece to go on the table. Never used anything else. Works fine as far as I can tell.

 

[alphageek]

Peter,

I use an arbor press. Because it is vertical and gravity holds the parts where I want them, mostly.

Horizontal pen presses require more hands than god allotted to me.

I must be doing something wrong as I use a relatively cheap clamp from HF and do it horizontally with no problem, and last I checked God had not given me an extra hand!

 

[PenPal]

Bearing Press 1 Ton located at eye height alongside the lathe. Fitted an Aluminium block on the lower part with thin Corian top and bottom. Works great for me.

Immediately behind it is avariable speed driven small Buff.

Regards Peter. I agree with Ed.

 

[BigShed]

Like Peter (aggromere) I have been using my lathe of late. I purchased a Sorby live centre set some time ago and one of the attachments is a cup centre.

I have turned up several Delrin bushes to take things like the slimline transmission and other Delrin bushes to take my rifle cartridge bottoms, fit the rifle cartridge bottom in the Delrin bush in the head stock, the slimline transmission in the Delrin bush in the tailstock, perfect alignment and very fine control over depth. In this case the headstock bush takes the assembly pressure on the shoulder of the rifle cartridge, rather than the bullet tip.

Haven't used my pen press or wood vise since I discovered this way of doing it.

Amazing the things I have made with my metal lathe and stock of Delrin rod

 

[traderdon55]

I have tried clamps,pen presses,and an arbor press. Since I made a couple of MT2 tapers with corian on the end of them to take with me doing demos I have found I prefer using my lathe to press my pens together.

 

[JimB]

When I started I used quick clamp from Harbor Freight. I now use a pen press from Glizzly. It works great but I also haven't tried any other methods for comparison.

 

[ctubbs]

I bought the PSI press in a starter kit and still use it. I have followed the advice given here to make a block to rest the pen blank and xmission in to seat it to the correct length. that helps tremendoulsy getting the xmission set to the right depth.

Charles

 

[MrWright]

I have been making a small pen press "The Wright Pen Press" I give them away for the price of 2 pen blanks from their State. The press works good, simple and uses the drill press. I am making a collection of pens with wood from each state. If interested let me know.

 

[OKLAHOMAN]

Here is the one Paul Huffman made for me about 3 years ago, It's been used , used and then used with no problems

 

[lorbay]

I always see stuff about pen presses or vises to assemble pens. Am i missing something.

I bought (dont remember where it was long ago) two delrin MT2 fixtures with rubber gaskets to hold them firmly in the head and tailstock. One of them is slightly concave to hold something curved or bumpy, the other one is flat. I use my lathe to assemble all my pens. Does anyone else do that, or does everyone use a pen press. I would like to know, cause I don't want to miss out on anything that would be better.

I use my lathe all the time. Great control.

Lin.

 

[bobjackson]

I use Paul's vice for drilling, but a pen press from PSI mounted on a board and held in a vice.