The Woodworking Podcast

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Here’s what I do to avoid this:

1. The best way is to get rid of the bushings completely when finishing. I don’t use a pen mandrel. I turn pens between a cone tipped “dead” center in the headstock and a normal cone live center in the tailstock. After turning and sanding to the bushings, take the bushings off and just hold the tube between those centers. Obviously don’t clamp down too tight as the turned pen tube is pretty fragile. Anyway, apply finish or additional wet sanding or whatever from there. The down side to this is you can only turn one tube at a time, so for kits with upper and lower tubes, they have to be done separately, but I’ve found this to be the best approach over all. Here’s a link to the “dead” center I’m talking about. http://amzn.to/2goZwnw

2. If you don’t have a dead center or don’t want to buy one, another option is to take the turned tubes off the mandrel and replace the bushings from the kit with “nylon” finishing bushings. These are intended for doing CA Finishes, but they work fine for any type of finish. They are non stick and cone shaped so they center the pen tube. Multiple pairs can be used to do multiple pen tubes on the mandrel at the same time. Here’s a link to these: http://amzn.to/2go3qJt

3. Finally, the last option would be to just turn your own finishing bushings out of small scraps of wood. Turn a ¼ to 3/8 tenon to fit the pen tube on a small scrap of wood (pen blank cutoff for example). Then turn another 3/8 or so section larger than the tenon but about the same or smaller diameter than the pen kit bushings. Make a pair of these and replace the kit bushing with the shop made wooden ones (these could be turned from acrylic as well). Then finish the pen blank as normal.

Just a few options to avoid bushing “poop” contaminating the pen finish. In case it’s of interest.

Kevin

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