I turned my first pen. I purchased a variety pack of funline pens and acrylic blanks from Penn State Industries to get started. This is a Funline/Slimline Satin Pearl pen with their Aquabright Purple Crush blank. I took me about three hours from start to finish but allowed me to use some of the tools I’ve purchased over the last two years but hadn’t yet used. I did not take pictures of the process, but I’ll post one of the finished pen.
What I learned
- I used my pen mill in the drill press to square up the blank. It chewed up the inside of the barrel pretty bad. I had to run it through a second time to clear the brass curls out enough to slide it on the mandrel. Next time i’ll run the pen mill in a hand drill to see how that works.
- As the blank was turned to shape I realized that you can see the brass through the remaining material. I’ll have to paint the tubes next time. On this blank it looks fine, it gives the purple a sort of golden glow.
- I ordered the wrong bushings with the kit and ended up using the ones that came with the mandrel. Thankfully they were the right ones. I’ll have to take care to get the correct bushings when I order kits in the future.
- My tools could be sharper. When turning acrylics everyone suggest to make sure your tools are sharp. While my tools were sharp, they could have been sharper. I noticed that on the blank section towards the tailstock there was some vibration while using the roughing gouge. I was using a mandrel saver so i’m assuming that the vibration was just excessive force on my part. the pen appears to be round, I can’t detect any eccentricity on the ends. The only skew I have is a very large one from Harbor Freight. I tried using my square carbide chisel from Rockler, but it’s pretty dull and I didn’t want to switch the head yet. Next time, sharper tools.
Pen Closeup