pen mandrell sugestions

[duckkisser]

hey im looking to get a pen mandrell for my delta 46-460 anyone have any recomendations? thought maybe Penn State industries seeing as there prices are prity resonable.

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/pen-mandrels.html

do i want to get teh universal or the #2 morse taper maxi mandrel

and im guessing i need the mandrell saver as well am i missing anything?

[duckkisser]

just found some bonds that have matured think ill spend it on toys for myself let me know if you know any better deals or if some of these are just plan junk and i should not waste my money.let me know how you would spend 250$

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LBUFFSYS.html thinking of buying this buffing system

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/PKM-BL.html not shure if this is the pen mandrell that i need

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/PKMSTS2.html figure if im going to have to get this as well as the pen mandrell

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/CSCPENCHK.html is this necisary if i have a drill press?

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/CXC4.html thought i should get this expanding collet as well if i want to make small objects like pocket watches

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/TM32.html i need this seems like it will do the trick for a drill chuck

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LCJC8.html not shure if this flat jaw chuck is the right size for the delta 46-460 if you know please tell me

as for tools

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LX197.html set of 4

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LX150.html single 3/4 tool would i need the full set or single tool for making deep cups/vaces ect....

if i dont get the set of 4 then ill buy this chuck http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LCM18X.html or http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LSR3.html or http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LSR3.html

[dwacker]

Personally Id skip everthing in your list except for the MT pen mandrel and Id add their baracuda sp? chuck. You will get more life out of those two tools than all that other stuff put together. I know it seems like you need alot of little toys for a lathe bust most are just gimicky items you can do without. A good chuck goes a looooong way.

Don

[duckkisser]

well i would like to get a dedicated buffer for shure, and i want the pen mandrel and saver, and i need a drill chuck so i can make salt and peper shakers, need a side scraper for bowl and cups, not shure about the flat jaws it does look like it would make it easer to cut out the bottom of bowl or plate. expanding collet dont know how usefull it would be what i realy need to a good way to mount a ring and turn rings to sell.

for the time being ill get a buffer, mandrel tools, drill chuck and a side scraper. i have the nova chuck and it has been great but its a pain to chainge it out for everything i want to make.

[sbarton22]

I second that the best addition to your lathe is going to be a good chuck. That is your #1 purchase after the lathe. Maybe a good bowl gouge is in there as well. Lots of folks swear by faceplates, and they have their place, but I find them cumbersome for the most part.

The pen mandrels are pretty standard, I have found, but I'm sure you can 800 opinions on this. I have the saver, and while it does it's job, it is actually annoyingly loud. I might try greasing it, i don't know.

Drilling straight on pen blanks becomes more and more important with the higher quality pens you make. If you are just making slimlines, then the amount of stock versus the tube will allow for a lot of slop. When you start getting into the thicker tubes and higher end blanks, the margin of error diminishes...the tubes on a fountain pen are bigger and, say, a fancy blank is cut fairly close to size.

If you have a drill press, then think about making a jig. I have one of those wood river jigs and they really aren't that good. Frankly, I suspect most are the same. But, never fear, you have a lathe. Get a nice Jacobs chuck and drill them out on the lathe. You will be dead on every time.

The other thing that I find really helpful is a barrel trimmer. The more pens you do, your tolerance for any slop in the final fit will shrink. I look back at the first 3-4 I made and I can't believe I thought they were cool. A barrel trimmer will clear up a lot. I find it VERY useful.

As far as pens go, about the only other things you might need are a thing that looks like a punch but is tapered. It is used to apply glue and insert the tube in the blank. And, speaking of punches, head over to your favorite Harbor Freight and pick up their punch set. You will, sooner or later, need to take a pen apart, and more or less, you have to push a stick in the pen and force the parts out.

Now, as for the gouges, I would stick to the tried and true bowl and spindle gouges first. The scrapers are great, but you will quickly find the need for the bowl gouges.Since they are the heart of turning, you might as well learn them correctly and first. I'm still new and trust me, I see the headaches I have saved by learning them and by the same token, found out how poorly I learned them.

As far as the steadies and those sorts of thing go, I would just take your time on them. You won't be ready to make a super deep vase any time soon if you are just starting.

Most importantly, make sure safety first and a face shield is on that list. I can't stress that enough. Even pen blanks hurt when come flying at you.

If you are just starting on the lathe, I am only about 8 months ahead of you and perhaps I can be of help as I am not very far removed from any point on the learning curve.

[duckkisser]

i have face shield and shop coat to protect me i bought some sorby tools for a my basic set including half inch bowl gouge and then some realy cheap sears tools that were in the classroom to practice my sharpening on(i grind those down too use on a special cut like realy narrow long grind for fiting into small areas.) the side scraper is for fiting down into pencil cups and steep bowls. i just made my first pencil cup and it was a small, hard opening to smooth down with just a bowl gouge. so is a side scraper what i want or do i want a hollowing tool? i have had my lathe since the summer and i have spend every moment i can studing and practicing so im coming along fairly fast at least to the point where i want to get some more chucks so i dont have to unscrew my chuck parts everytime i want to do something unusual like a small spindle to fit into the large form i just turned. as for waiting for things like vases well i like to plan ahead and learn as much as i can before i start making just trying to figure out the ideal structure and desighn i would think that a circle with 4 wheels would be a more stable steady then just two on bottom and one at the top.

what do you know about flat jaw chucks? i realy like making bowls so i thought i would invest in one. do they realy hold fast? or are they desighned for a very specific use like puting finishes on.

and the expanding collet well i like making small stuff like neclaces and key rings or just turning small discs for a biger project and i dont want to waste lots of wood to make a 2 inch disc so is a collet something i want to invest in so i dont have to make a new glue block for every neclace i made? was thinking of making and selling jewlary that were 2 inches wide and puting a acrylic decorative center in the 1 and 3/8 hole so the collet would be easy for making a few dozen of these without several inbetween stages of making glue blocks.

[sbarton22]

I am assuming your pen cup was turned with the grain facing parallel. If you are first starting, in my opinion, digging into that end grain is the most frustrating thing I have faced. I'll bet you probably don't have a complete grasp of how to present the tool for that cut (not sure I do yet, to be honest), the object is small to begin with, you probably still had a rounded bottom, and you felt like you had to press really hard to remove any kind of material at all?. I might be off, but I remember the first one I did and that shot me right into pens because I knew I was doing something wrong that that was too frustrating.

A couple things. First, smaller objects are way harder than larger objects (or at least medium sized) because there isn't space to operate and every error is amplified because your eye is already tuned in so close to the object. So don't get frustrated. A couple of work arounds are as follows..

1) no one says you have to remove the material by gouge alone. For me, I grab my handy dandy jacobs chuck and mount up a forstner bit and hog out most of the material with zero effort. Then I grab my straight edge scraper and get nice crisp corners and finish it up.

OR

2) and I hesitate to share this one, because you will find that you stop using a lot of your other gouges. Look into Easy Wood Tools. Their tools could not make turning easier. no fancy presenting the bevel to the wood or any of that. Just jam the thing into the wood and off you go. It isn't a miricle tool ,but the first time you use it, you will think so. I have not gotten over the initial awesomeness of it and actually use it mostly for hogging material and use my bowl gouges much more.

I love the scrapers though. I use my two rounded scrapers about 50% of the time. I just thing they are easy to maneuver and can take a very light cut if needed.

A hollowing tool is really for convex shapes where you are cutting blind and can't reach with your other tools. Part of your frustration was that you were cutting into endgrain, which, as we know, is the toughest thing to do. When you do a bowl, the grain is perpendicular to the lathe bed and that results in much easier hollowing. Like a hot knife through butter compared to that end grain business.

I have an contracting collet that I use for more complex pens...like a capless pen or a modified pentel pencil. They work great, you just have to be light with your cuts and use the tail stock as support for as long as possible. I have never seen a 2" expending one, but it sounds cool. Don't underestimate the value of a jam chuck made out of scrap. you could make one of those bad boys for finishing your jewelry? If you don't know a jam chuck, google that. They are your friend and often the only solution to various holding conundrums.

As far as jaw chucks, I was told to get the biggest my lathe could handle without taxing it. But taxing it is kind of silly. I have a 1220 Jet and the miniNova is the recommended chuck. But the extra weight to go to the SuperNova is so minimal considering the weight difference between mounting an 8" log and 9" log. Once you get into the 4 four chucks, you will see all of the other cool things you can add/do to it... cole jaws, worm screw, holding tennons, holding mortises, holding jam chucks, etc, etc.

[duckkisser]

Barton easer to show you how i was making the pen holder the finish was messed up so i am sanding it off. so it is not as prity as i would like to post on here

this is a pen cup that i like the look of. the wood had a partial ingrowth of bark so i stabalized it with cherry on the top and bottom. took a risk i know to turn this but i kept tools very sharp and turned slowly with very shallow cuts. and i made shure that the glue up was flawless. I used my drill to remove the bulk of the materal. but it sill had a few hair raising moments. the hardest part was geting my gouge and other tools along the side to even it out. (thats why i was thinking of geting a side scraper) (i will wait to get hollowing tool when i decide to do ornimates and vases ect.... thanks for the advice Barton) only thing i dont like is the finish the C. A. glue i tried using for some reason kept streaking and could not get to even out so i started to sand it off that is the white that you see inside the hole.

i got the nova chuck and it works great easy to clean/tighten and ajust. just dont want to be swaping the jaws out all the time so thats why i was looking at the cole jaw chuck for 100 dollers to hold a project and let me cut a foot or finish the bottom parts.

[sbarton22]

NICE!! You jumped right in on the deep end with that piece of wood! I think it looks great.

Someone with more experience than me might tell you different, but I was taught to turn as fast as possible...more or less. Turning slower seems to allow more opportunity to catch. When I have some tearout on the endgrain sections of a bowl, I just speed it up and usually those problem spots go away. But, like all things turning, every turner has their own opinion and you have to find what you are comfortable with.

I hear you on the getting your gouges down in those tight spots. That where I was saying a larger piece is easier to work because you need understand all the various ways to present the tool to get in those tricky spots. And yes, that is the perfect spot for the scraper. Look into those EWT tools (or similar). They can do most of what a scraper can do plus a lot more. But, like I said, my round nose scraper is one of my favorite tools. Couldn't imagine working without it.

And you are dead on with the cole jaws. They are great for finishing bottoms of bowls. If you need to try something before you get your hands on them, there is a doughnut chuck that works great too. That is the next lathe jig I am going to build.

A few pointers on your nova chuck... When holding a tennon, hold the smallest tennon possible. If you notice, the circle is only complete when it is closed. as you open the jaws, you stop holding the tennon as a circle but as 8 separate points of contact. Now, use common sense on that as you might not want to hold a 20" bowl with 2" tennon. You get the idea.

Going the other way, when holding a mortice, the same applies. The smaller the mortise, the more surface area of the outside of the jaws that are doing the holding. As you expand the jaws, the surface area reduces and you end up holding on only 4 points of contact.

You are really getting into this! Now you have me motivated to get in my shop and do some damage.

[duckkisser]

i didnt slow it down untill i got closer to the bottom and the ingrowth of bark then i slowed it down and used a combination of a round nose scraper and a sanding scraper that i made.........its a stick with 50 grit sandper from belt sander glued to it. i was too afraid to use a gouge or even the scraper much because of that crack could catch and throw it way fast. the entire time i was working it i would stop it make shure it was on tight make a couple more passes and check it again. just sad the finish was ruined ill have to take it off and try the shine juice on it....maybe i can put that on top of CA ill try it on scrap wood and see what it does. i might make a doughnut chuck as well when i do biger stuff but i think the cole chuck would work for smaller stuff like my little bowls that i made.

do you know what the ideal wire to use to burn wood on the lathe is?

here is something that bought recently that i think all turners should have for sanding

http://www.amazon.com/Swingline-Rubber-Finger-Diameter-S7054035/dp/B0017DF9U0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329604913&sr=8-1 rubber thimbles/finger guards let you grip the paper better and also protect from any heat build up from friction.

also any ink pad refill bottles the red/blue ones make a good dye for the wood or mix em to make a purple.

[sbarton22]

CA isn't the only finish you can try. There are friction finishes, waterlox, penetrating oils, sprayed finishes, that new GF turner's finish, etc, etc. My mentor finishes everything off the lathe. He uses a Maloof style mixture or he just uses danish oil. I really like the danish oil. You can really let the wood be what it wants to be. I did a mahogany and African darkwood little honey pot looking thing, and the darkwood was like glass and the mahogany showed off its open grain.

They say that you can use any wire to burn. I have hat limited success. I use KC Wire (I think that is what it is called). I think I got it at Rockler or Woodcraft in a moment of weakness.

If you look at the image, I found it harder than one might think to get consistent thicknesses.

[duckkisser]

i like the bo shine juice its very easy not toxic smelling and its realy fast finish.