nilsatcraft
Member
Here are pics of my first attempt with Aluminum. I've been wanting to do this for months and I've seen a lot of cool aluminum pens on the group here and thought I'd give it a go. I bought a 33" rod of 5/8" round aluminum from a local welding shop for $5. Being overly excited, I forgot to pick up the instructions and bushings (I pick my own orders here at Craft Supplies) but I felt like I could do it without those. I was half right [:I].
The kit calls for a 27/64" bit but I thought I'd try a 13/32" since I expected a little looseness in the hole. That turned out to be perfect. THE DRILLING WAS THE WORST PART! It took an hour and a half on my cheap benchtop drill press with a 2" stroke! The shavings clogged the channels of the drill bit easily and I had to keep a bowl of water close by to put the blank in after each little bit of drilling. My homemade pen blank vise was really struggling to hold onto the blank- it kept spinning. Next time I'll use the $40 Pen Blank Drilling Vise and I'll use a full size drill press. For decoration, I thought I'd drill some holes and use a copper filler. I acquired some copper dust and I mixed it with thick CA and filled the holes. Once that was done I glued in the tubes and barrel trimmed them. They trimmed really well- even better than most woods. I didn't have the right bushings so I took the smaller bushing from my Havana Ballpoint Bushing set and used those to mount it to the mandrel. I decided to use my adjustable mandrel to minimize the flex on the rod. I did them one at a time. I figured since it was metal I would turn it at the slowest speed (500 RPM) on my Jet mini. I tried the roughing gouge, the scraper and the spindle gouge and I found that the roughing gouge worked the best.
The inlay kept chipping out so I eventually used black CA glue on the cap section. It wasn't what I wanted to use but it was fine. I had already invested three and half hours into the pen at that point and I wanted to enjoy my Saturday night with my family so I left the shop. The next day my son and I went back out to the shop and I put the longer (bottom) tube on the mandrel. This time I thought I'd have better luck at a higher speed so I cranked it up to 4,000 RPM and wow- what a difference. Metal, plastic, wood- whatever- turn it fast! The copper inlay didn't chip out because I had it spinning fast enough and I plowed through the metal, producing long thin ribbons of 'tin foil'. I sanded to 600 grit to keep a bit of a Satin finish to it and I then put Renaissance Wax on it. It turned out OK for my first one but I need a few days to recover before I try another!
So what I learned was- turn fast, use a good drill press, think twice before trying decorative inlay on your first run and get some MicroMesh or higher grit paper if you want a highly reflective surface like chrome. I had fun and I'll try another before too long. Please feel free to make fun of my mismatched pen or complain about this long post. [
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] for the next one. Maybe not pain, but time for sure! Thanks for the blow-by-blow description. It helps those who haven't tried it fear it not!