Finally got a little shop time

[Matt Ranum]

As some here may know, I grow Christmas trees for a living. One of the places we sell is a local hardware store, awesome store that truly caters to any tradesman, hobbyist, or just regular home repairs. From card scrapers to unisaws to faucet parts, a great store and a great family that runs it. Anyway I thought I would make the owners a couple pens as an extra personal thank you for putting up with us every year. The one for the Mrs. I went with the "Breast cancer pink" and know shes gonna love it. For the Mr. I went with the Rinehart kit with its "hex-head" features with aluminum for the blanks. Never turned metal before but I think it came out pretty decent. Picked up a stick from a local machine shop so I have no idea as to the grade of metal it is.




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[bob svoboda]

Very nice and out of the ordinary, Matt. How was the metal to turn?

[Matt Ranum]

Very nice and out of the ordinary, Matt. How was the metal to turn?

A few months back I made an Oland style tool similar to this one, http://aroundthewoods.com/oland.shtml I used a 1/4" piece of tool steel for the bit ground with a round scraper type of grind. I used that for most of it and it turned real nice with the lathe running about 150 RPM or so. Finished it up with a 1-1/4" wide skew used as a scraper to smooth and blend it all out.