No, I didn't make them today...just finally got around to taking pix and posting them
Both were really fun to make.
5x5-- I only have the small jet mini-lathe. I picked it up from Woodcraft for my birthday, when they had their big sale this summer. I had only made pens on it until this weekend, when I made a mallet. The mallet really maxed out the lathe, especially at first when I had a ton of weight in wood on it. As the wood shaved off it got a lot easier.
The pen was not hard to make...it just took a lot of time and patience...especially because I had to glue up the blank in stages. There is a tutorial on penturners.org, which includes several additional segmented pens. The most important part was setting up the stop block and zero clearance fence on the miter saw. This kept the cutoffs from flying in my eye
BTW, the one suggestion that I have, fwiw is for the starting blank. I'll post this in the tips/tricks section...
When creating a checkerboard blank for a segmented pen, it is important to drill the hole for the brass tubes exactly in the middle. I use a brad-tip bit to drill the hole, so, before gluing four pieces of wood together to make the checkerboard blank, I use a block plane to shave off a very very tiny splinter of wood on the one corner of all four pieces of wood that will be at the center of the blank. This gives the brad tip a channel to guide it straight down the center of the blank without wandering.
The other important part for making this particular pen was to make sure that the wenge was cut at an angle to the hole drilled in it. Otherwise, it will not slide on the brass tube at an angle to match the maple/cherry.
Cheers
Chris
