Our First Turn

[Bryan Rocker]

Over the past few weeks we have been acquiring the bits and pieces necessary to begin pen turning. We have learned lots through this. Our lathe is a Wilton, our turning tools are HF $10 cheapies, we did take the plunge and bought a Wood Craft horizontal wet grinder. We picked up some cheap maple blanks to practice on and have been making non-round chunks of pine and oak round, well sorta. Today I cut the chunks of maple and set my wife up to do her first turn at a pen. I think we took on a more difficult pen than we should have. We thought it would be need to do a click pen. She turned the wood down and we polished it to 1500 grit. She then took some johnsons floor wax to give it a sheen. Now comes the completely frustrating part. Putting it together with no manual or instructions. Some parts went well however, the clicking part took us 3 disassembles before we had it together. Other than one ugly spot it looks pretty good. My wife did a good job. Here is a pic of it in maple.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Bryan - success! Be sure to tell your wife she did a great job on the pen! Love the curly maple! Looking forward to seeing the next one!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Looks good to me Bryan! Tell the LOYL she did a great job.

[Chris Huybregts]

Awesome pen!

Instead of buying a pen press (as there are so many purchases) I turned some scrap maple into my pen press. I turned two pieces, one has a cup (so i can put a finished blank in easily) and the other has a dimple in it so I can put a pen's nib in it, I then mount one piece to a chuck, then the other piece to my jacobs chuck (I drill the blanks on my lathe) and then use the lathe as a pen press. I find this so helpful when doing the twist pens as i have great control over how deep to press the transmission into the pen blank!

Good luck and well, don't let your wife have all the fun :P

[Steve Mawson]

Looks like you are off to a great start. I have found that many web sites have instructions on putting the pens together. I just print them off and take to the shop. Makes it quite a bit easier to not make a mistake although that is not to say mistakes can not happen, you can guess how I know. Just a suggestion. While I am at it one other suggestion-I usually have some boards laying around that have knots in them. Not good for nice looking flat work but the grain in the knots makes great pen wood in many cases.

[Bryan Rocker]

Thanks, since we just moved into this house back in October, I still don't have a vise set up. I used a set of pipe clamps 3/4" that have a stand on them and used it to press it all together. I drilled the piecess with my small drill press, which may need to be upgraded to a bigger one. I was warned turning wood was an expensive well you never came out of LOL!

I will pass on your compliments to the LOML!!

Bryan

[David Drickhamer]

Tell your wife a job well done. Let's see some more. My wife wanted to make pens so I bought all the stuff. To date she's never touched the lathe. :o