This hardly counts as a project as it only took a few hours but it’s my first time woodturning post-induction and I was (probably unreasonably) proud of the result. Sorry to everyone busy with their own stuff that I interupted with my little pen in my excitement and thanks wood lathe techs for making it possible.
Pen.
It looks great in the pic - even better in person!
Great job - I now have yet another project to add to my ever growing list of things to try in the space!!
I’d be well chuffed if my two hands had made that! How did you go about boring the centre hole; did you use the pillar drill, or something else?
Pillar drill, yeah, though I might as well have done it by hand. I need to put more effort into a work holding solution, the hole entered centre and drifted several mm to the right. Luckily you only need a few mm around the hole for the end product so plenty of stock to work with in the end.
Really impressive and inspiring start!
There was a chuck for the lathe
Looks really good. Where did you get the parts from?
Thanks gang! This hardware came as a freebie basically with some related tooling, but you can buy them cheap and easily in all sorts of designs, sizes and finishes. Googling a ‘slimline’ pen kit will get you something close to this for a couple quid, or less even.
Yeah that’s the smart way of doing it. I wasn’t sure if I was greenlit for the drill chuck under L1 induction even though it’s basically turning between centres so I dodged the issue and just used the pillar. I’m L2 inducted now and the drill chuck obviously ranks lower in complexity than faceturning so will just use that going forward.
There is also the issue of workholding as well, a drive spur wouldn’t work in this case and the four jaw chuck requires L2 access.
I’ve always used a pillar drill. You’re going to turn it parallel to the hole anyway so as long as you’re close it doesn’t really matter.
