A couple of weeks ago, I received from William Wood-Wright (www.penblanks.ca) an order of Artist Sketch Pencil kits. These are mechanical pencils that use a 5.6mm lead in a Collet type holder. One of the steps in making pens is to trim the rough blank in order to square the blank to the tube. You have to be careful that you don’t shorten the tube, because you run the risk of your kit not going together. One tool to accomplish this is called a Pen Mill. It has a pilot shaft that fits down the tube and there is a cutter head that cuts away excess wood and squares the tube to the blank. In order to maintain a “square” the pilot shaft has to fit the tube snugly. I neglected to purchase the correct pilot shaft when I ordered and so I didn’t immediately try to make one of these pencils. This week, I was thinking about it again and realized that I could likely use my belt sander to do this.
This morning, I went down to the shop and tried. Sure enough, my sander worked fine and I now have a sketch pencil.
The lead in this pencil is 5.6mm in diameter and i is held by a collet style holder. There is a sharpener in the cap end. A very ingenious design, although it is a little on the fat side. This will work well in my shop.
I purchased a 15/32 nd drill bit to drill this hole in the blank and found that the tube was quite loose in the hole. I let the CA glue set up for several minutes befor I squared the ends. Not sure if it is just the mahogany that made the bit push out a bit or if it is the wrong size of bit.
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