It’s been about three weeks since I purchased my first lathe, a Jet JWL-1220, and I’m having quite a lot of fun turning things.  I am still learning so there are a few things that I have turned so far that I have not been at all pleased with (a little bit of that may be that I am a perfectionist) but I know that I will improve over time.  The first thing I turned was just a random shape out of a piece of 2 in. x 2 in. x 6 in. piece of poplar just so I could say that I used my new lathe.  If you would like to see a picture of that turning visit my other blog.  After that, however, I decided to turn an actual project—something small so that I would be able to finish easily.  On a recent trip to Michigan I read a book (don’t worry I wasn’t driving) about turning pens, so what better small project could I turn than a pen?  I purchased all necessary equipment—mandrel, bushings, pen kits, CA glue, pen blanks and then some things that probably weren’t necessary but would be helpful such as a pen press, a tube insertion tool and a pen mill set.  After all of my new tools arrived, I set forth to the shop to make my first pen! 

 

I purchased several types of wood so now it was time to choose what wood to use for my first pen.  I had apple wood, rambutan, spalted sycamore, spalted hackberry, cocobolo, bocote, poplar, oak, red palm, walnut, pheasant wood and several others that I can’t recall at the moment.  After some ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ I ended up using walnut.  First I cut the blanks to size and then used a pen drilling jig so that I could insert the pen tubes into the blank.  I made my pen drilling jig out of a pine 2 x 4 that was leaning against the wall in my shop looking for something to do.  I cut two 4 inch pieces from the 2 x 4 and cut a V-groove out of each pieces.  To drill the blank all I have to do is put the blank into the v-groove and clamp the jig to the drill press.

 

 

 

  I squared off the ends of the pen blank with my pen mill and then I put the blank on the mandrel so that I could turn it.  After turning the pen blank to a shape that looked like it would make a comfortable pen I started to sand it smooth.  In the process of sanding I determined that I will never use 100 grit sandpaper on my lathe ever again because it was just too coarse.  After the pen-to-be was nice and smooth I finished it with a coat of HUT Crystal Coat and let it dry for 30 minutes.  I couldn’t let the pen blank just sit around for too long because it was almost a pen!  I collected all of the pen pieces and my blank and pressed everything together to created my first pen.  Take a look!

 

 

 

I think it came out pretty good for the first go-around.