In my previous post, I made some red and white blanks. In this post, I will show how I prepared these blanks for turning. In short, you prepare them as you would any other blank you are going to turn for a pen.

First, I drilled a hole through the blank with a 7mm drill bit.


(Note my blank holder which I have mentioned in a previous post).

Once the hole has been drill, you glue the brass barrel in the blank. Once the glue dries, you need to level the area around the hole so that the pen will go together squarely. You do this with a barrel trimmer, which is on the end of the drill. You can see the area trimmed on the blank.


Once this is done, you can place the blanks on the mandrel with the bushings for the particular pen you are going to turn. It is now ready to turn.



Everything here when as expected so I am not sure if there are any lessons to gain from this.

Next post: turning the pen and making the pen.