For the longest of time I’ve been working on the ground when processing my logs with a chainsaw. I had a wooden pallet and I would position the logs on it and then cut them. It worked OK. Often I had trouble securing the logs so they didn’t move while I was cutting them, [...]
I spent some time this weekend organizing my workshop. It often feels like I spend more time organizing my workshop than I do working on stuff. A big part of the problem is I keep on buying stuff and then I have to find a home for it in an already crowded space. A [...]
I was getting tired of reaching for my calipers and setting them to my chuck diameter every time I needed to turn a tenon. The alternative was trying to “guesstimate” the diameter needed and very often I would turn the tenon to small. So I made a spindle and tenon gauge.
I have [...]
Uphill or downhill. Cutting with the grain or against the grain. Understanding how the grain is orientated on the lathe and which direction to cut in order to get the smoothest cuts possible can be confusing.
Brian Clifford has a great article on his site The Woodturners Workshop which illustrates these concepts very clearly. [...]
I drill all my pen blanks on the lathe. It takes a little bit longer than using a drill press, but I find it to be more accurate, both in terms of the hole size and drilling through the center of the blank. The later is particularly important when drilling a segmented blank, as you need to drill directly through the center of the design.
I’m sure others have slightly different techniques, so feel free to post any comments or tips on something I may not have mentioned.
The pen blanks I show here are cherry. A customer ordered a couple of Perfect Fits and supplied a slab of cherry from which I milled these two blanks.

You can click on any of the images to see a larger version.
Continue reading Drilling a pen blank on the lathe
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