September meeting will be a professional demonstration by
Jason Breach. https://www.jasonbreach.co.uk/

Tell your family friends and everybody you know. We need bums on seats.

Terry Rand, a recently returned member of the club provided us with an entertaining Pen turning demo in August. He started turning when his wife bought him a pen turning course, which sparked his interest. To start with, Terry ran us through all of the bits and pieces you may need (and some you don’t) for making pens.

He ran through the process of drilling, adding tubes and squaring the blanks, and then the various mounting options for turning pens. Terry prefers using a round bar rest at home as it allows the tool to move quickly and smoothly along the blank.

Terry’s first piece was a quick demo using an elm burr that had been cut with inserts to create a celtic knot. Unfortunately the glue gave out on par of the wood, so Terry switched to an acrylic blank to continue. This was turned down to almost the right size, using the bushes as a guide, but trying not to hit them with the tools. Once down to size the acrylic was finished using sanding pads with gloss polish on the pads to lubricate the cut. With the finish of the body complete, Terry talked through the simple assembly of this single piece pen kit using the manufacturers guide diagram (which Terry sensibly has laminated to keep it clean and re-usable!) along with some manufactured compression blocks that fit in the morse taper of the lathe. These are then used to compress the pieces into the pen without damaging either the blank or the parts

. The next piece was a standard two piece slimline kit, the kind that most turners will use the first time they make a pen. Terry explained that working from the middle to the edge of the blank is the best approach which avoids chip out. Again turning almost down to the bushes before sanding the rest of the way.

For finish on wooden pens, Terry uses a clear melamine lacquer. This is put on with a cloth, allowed to dry and then polished before waxing with a Micro crystalline wax. When removing the piece from the lathe, it’s important to remember the order you place them down to avoid losing the grain match before assembly. This time Terry showed a pen assembly kit sold by places like Axminster.

After the morning Tea break, Terry talked through the process of making the Celtic knot pen blanks, explaining that they really are quite simple! But before you start the blank does need to be nice and square!

The first cut is made with a saw at 45 degrees across the middle of the blank making sure to mark the start point all around the blank to make subsequent cuts easy to line up. The cut itself does not go all the way through the blank, but leaves enough wood to keep the piece together.
A different colour piece of wood cut to the same thickness as the saw kerf is then glued into place and allowed to dry. This is then trimmed and squared before the piece is rotated one turn and another 45 degree cut is made and filled in the same way. This is repeated for each side of the blank.
Once dry, this is drilled squarely through the middle, tubes fitted and then turned to round. This turns away the small line of plain wood on each side, leaving the knot pattern.

The final talk through was how Terry achieves his Herringbone pattern, using a jig to cut and glue up small L shapes of wood which are then glued in a jig. For a really fancy finish, small slices of veneer can be included between each layer.

After this, Ed took up Terry’s offer of making a pen using an Acrylic blank, before we finished for the day and tidied up

Paul/Fred