Gary DeWitt
01-19-2007, 10:34 PM
Well, I've been doing some repair work around the 'hood for side money, and decided I wanted a new awl, so I ordered a kit. It's based on pen turning, with a tube that runs down the middle of the blank that becomes a permanent part of the handle. The steel part runs through the tube.
This means I needed at some point to square up the blank to the tube. The way I would have done this in the past is using a little storbought jig made for pens and my 12" disc sander, but I had sold it off to make room and $ for the new General. So I had to build a new disc sander for the lathe. Means I had to contact a friend from our club and get some of his homemade faceplates, he welds them up from large nuts and washers. I wasn't about to dedicate a $40 faceplate to a sanding disc. Then I had to drill and tap the faceplate for 14x20 screws. Then cut an MDF blank, screw it to the fp and true it up on the edge and face. Then down to the tool store for the sanding discs (knew I should have kept the ones from the old sander, darn!). Then modify a jig I had built for fluting to accept my miter bar. To hold it to the new lathe, I had to make some new blocks to fit. Then modify the pen jig for a bigger blank, as the awl blank is about 2x2x3. All in all, over ten hours work, but it did the job! Ever have a week like this, where one thing leads to another and just eats up all your turning time?
For anyone looking for an easy method of squaring up pen blanks, this works really well, and is easy to set up on a dedicated disc sander that has a miter slot...
This means I needed at some point to square up the blank to the tube. The way I would have done this in the past is using a little storbought jig made for pens and my 12" disc sander, but I had sold it off to make room and $ for the new General. So I had to build a new disc sander for the lathe. Means I had to contact a friend from our club and get some of his homemade faceplates, he welds them up from large nuts and washers. I wasn't about to dedicate a $40 faceplate to a sanding disc. Then I had to drill and tap the faceplate for 14x20 screws. Then cut an MDF blank, screw it to the fp and true it up on the edge and face. Then down to the tool store for the sanding discs (knew I should have kept the ones from the old sander, darn!). Then modify a jig I had built for fluting to accept my miter bar. To hold it to the new lathe, I had to make some new blocks to fit. Then modify the pen jig for a bigger blank, as the awl blank is about 2x2x3. All in all, over ten hours work, but it did the job! Ever have a week like this, where one thing leads to another and just eats up all your turning time?
For anyone looking for an easy method of squaring up pen blanks, this works really well, and is easy to set up on a dedicated disc sander that has a miter slot...