I am sick of the site of pens.

I have had a pen making session.
The Acrylic blanks and pen kits are from Axminster tools.

These are part of my order for a new Gallery.
I do not enjoy pen making but is something I have to do now and again.
When I have to make pens I do them in batches of 20 this way each pen takes me less than 15 minutes.
The way I make pens.
The first thing is to cut the blanks to the right length this is done on the bandsaw.
These kits have two different sized tubes and both sizes are marked on my cutting jig.

Then all the blanks are drilled in one batch making sure I keep them in pairs.

I rough up the tubes and glue them all in with expanding poly glue.
While the glue is drying I undo all the little packets that the components are in and put them together in a shallow bowl.

The glue is soon hard and they can be trimmed with the barrel trimmer.
Both the drilling and the trimming are done using the proper vice in a pillar drill.

The mandrel is already set up so I turn them and sand them.
For the turning I use a small spindle roughing gouge and finish with a 1/2" skew.
I sand from 150 grit to 600 grit and then use green webrax.
I only use the abrasive paper once, I tear off a piece about an inch long sand with the lathe turning then stop and hand sand length ways with each grit.
This stops you getting sanding marks around the blank.
I only use each piece once as it is more efficient and saves time.

I finish the blanks with Hut polish for polishing plastics it leaves a good hard shinny surface.

Then all the pens are put together in one go this saves lots of time.

That is how I make 20 pens in under 5 hours .
They are all exactly the same all a perfect fit and finished to a very high standard.