I mistakenly stumbled onto the option of making a custom center band for a pen*. I used a 2 inch piece of ebony, glued in a brass tube, turned it down to the diameter of the pen and then tried to cut slices off it (about the width of a standard center band). Well, this didn't work so good on the band saw or by hand. The ebony chipped, and none of them were uniform in width.
Anybody do something like this before and have some advice for me? Only alternative that comes to mind is cut the band before turning it and include it on the mandrel with the blanks so everything is turned/finished at the same time. Thoughts???
*How did this happen, you ask? :wsmile: I was making a slimline pen for my mother-in-law and accidentally used a Euro bushing in the middle of the blanks on the mandrel. I should have realized but I haven't made any slimlines for awhile so the mistake slipped by right up until the point I was assembling the pen :icon_scra:eusa_doh: Instead of trashing the whole thing, it occurred to me that I could make a center band that matched the center diameters of the barrels and the whole thing would fit together nicely. I did get one that worked well enough, so my MIL will have her pen. But there's got to be a better way!
Anybody do something like this before and have some advice for me? Only alternative that comes to mind is cut the band before turning it and include it on the mandrel with the blanks so everything is turned/finished at the same time. Thoughts???
*How did this happen, you ask? :wsmile: I was making a slimline pen for my mother-in-law and accidentally used a Euro bushing in the middle of the blanks on the mandrel. I should have realized but I haven't made any slimlines for awhile so the mistake slipped by right up until the point I was assembling the pen :icon_scra:eusa_doh: Instead of trashing the whole thing, it occurred to me that I could make a center band that matched the center diameters of the barrels and the whole thing would fit together nicely. I did get one that worked well enough, so my MIL will have her pen. But there's got to be a better way!