squaring leftover pen blanks

[jeff oldham]

I have a lot of leftover pen blanks,,,all are different sizes and some are too small to hold using a belt sander to square them,,i know if you had a milling machine it would be no problem,,but needless to say I don't have one,,can anyone give me some ideas on how to do this,,i hate throwing them away when you could glue them up and make a nice segmented pen,,thank you,,

[Paul Williams]

Are you talking about squaring the ends? I use a PSI pen chuck to drill the hole for the tube on the lathe. After gluing the tube I put the blank back in the chuck and turn the ends down to the tube end. I have also been known to mount the blank, with tube, between centers and turn the blank round and to just a little larger than the largest diameter for the pen. Then I put it in the pen chuck or if small enough my drill chuck and use a bottom cutting router bit held with a drill chuck in the tail stock ram to turn the end down to the tube. I don't think that I have ever squared the ends prior to gluing the tube in a blank.

[jeff oldham]

no,,im talking about the small leftover pieces you have from a pen blank and you cannot hold them to use a belt sander,,

[Al Launier]

Do you have a miter square & slot for a sander or table saw or router? If so, just hold the piece against the square & clean off the end.

[Steve Nix]

How small is small? Can you post a pic. If the length and width are enough fit a pen blank you should br able th drill..

[Paul Williams]

Make a small sliding table for your table saw. Use a clamp to hold the piece so your fingers stay away from the blade.

[David Walser]

Jeff -- Like the others, I'm not sure I have a good idea what it is you're hoping to accomplish. I think you are referring to the small bits of blank that are left when you trim a pen blank to length, leaving you with pieces that may be less than 1/4" in length. You'd like to be able flatten/square up these blank-ends to use as accents or a pen or to use a part of a segmented pen. Am I right? If so, I'd suggest you hot glue a handle to the blank-end. If the piece is drilled, hot glue a brass tube in place. If it's not drilled, use a small dowel. With the handle hot glued, you can quickly flatten one side on the sander. The hot glue will come off with a little rubbing alcohol.

HTH

[Steve Peterson]

That sounds like a huge effort for such small pieces from the ends of the blanks. I would use bigger pieces of wood if I were going to go through the effort of making a segmented blank. No point in struggling with micro size pieces that are hard to handle and would result in a bad finished product

If the pieced are already drilled, then maybe you could just glue them as you stack them onto a tube. Buy 10-12" tubes and cut them to length after gluing everything in place. You could build a simple handle with a short 1/4" dowel sticking out to hold them to the belt sander if you need to flatten them.

Steve

[David Walser]

On a slightly related topic -- what to do with all the small left over pieces we're too cheap to throw away: When I get around to it (probably after I retire), I'd like to cast these cast-offs into pen, pepper mill, or bottle stopper blanks. Brendan Stemp has a video showing how he uses epoxy resin to cast bowl blanks out of little odds and ends of wood. I think something similar would work well for other small turned items. Here's a link to Brendan's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-81Cwk9lPg