What is the best wood for turning pens?

[hobbymad]

Lots of options - I find stabilized woods to be better for pen making and also they finish well.

 

[Pierre]

I use a cheap pillar drill with an engineer's drill vice and a square hand held on the vice for all my 7mm - 10mm after that the lathe. Draw a cross diagonally on the end from corner to corner to get the centre then tap a nail into the centre so the drill can use it to set in. then drill slowly on the pillar drill or on the lather 900 rpm should do and as you get to the end push in slower to avoid breakout. Don't drill first then turn the blank around you will never hit dead on. Unless you are drilling for a Celtic knot or some other precise line on the pen blank it doesn't matter whether the hole is dead straight down the middle. I make many pens out of grape vine trunks all wobbly and hand held drilled, so long as the hole itself is straight through and there is enough wood to turn no-one will ever know if you drilled straight in the blank.

 

[Neiljohn]

Hi all,

A quick question and please excuse me if it’s an obvious answer that I’ve missed - newbie pen turner, it’s all still a bit of a mystery.

So I’ve had issues drilling blanks and getting a satisfactory precise hole, centred etc. with my cheap pillar & drill assembly. I then decided I’d place the blanks in the lathe and drill. This provided much better results with a far more precise hole - little or no movement of the drill bit. However I wasn’t getting as near perfectly centred holes due to my placing of the blank in the chuck.

So I’m now thinking, place the blanks in the chuck, turn the last 2.5cm or so to round, place that end in the chuck, and then drill?

Is this obvious, are there any issues I’m going to encounter or should I be doing this anyway OR do I bite the bullet and invest a few hundred ££’s in a decent pillar drill? If it’s the latter are there any recommendations on that too please?

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Colin.

I use an independent 4 jaw for drilling so I can adjust the blanks position, I drove large metal cutting lathes with them for a very long time and made my own adaptor for a suitably small chuck to fit on the wood lathe.

Re your original question, wood from hobby suppliers can be expensive, off-cuts from larger suppliers are often cheaper, my last 50x50x500mm of Zebrano cost me a tenner as it was an off-cut, cut down lengthways into four ~21x21mm lengths it's good for quite a few pens. The gifted Cherry, Holly and other timbers from an old friend who cut some of it 35 years ago are great, but take a lot more prep.