Did you know that there are certain styles of pen turning kits that use less than a "full" length pen blank? The Carbara or the Sierra-style kits both take less than a full blank, and there are several reasons why using them might be to your advantage. (And check out your chance to win two of these kits below!)

Do you have pen blanks or remainders that are less than the proper size? The Carbara kit uses a blank less than three inches long.

Available in three beautiful platings (Gold, Chrome, and Titanium, shown above), the Carbara pen is both easy to make and comfortable to write with. It features a well-balanced design and accepts premium Parker refills (including popular gel refills).

Is cost an issue? Maybe you sell turned pens at craft shows or online. The Sierra pen kit allows you to use only one-half of a normal blank, thus reducing the overall cost of producing the pen. The Sierra Kit comes in several beautiful styles and finishes (below and upper right):

And for something unusual, check out the brand-new Sierra Circuit-Board Pen Kit (pictured, left), which includes a blank made from a non-functional circuit board! Available in attractive gold and chrome finishes, it makes for a fabulous, unique look.

Both the Carbara and the Sierra kits are also a great way to use up scraps of exotics/specialty woods that you may have tucked away in a corner of your shop! Try them out today!

Pen blank / Pen Kit Giveaway:
NOTE: Contest has ended! Subscribe to Buzz Saw so you don't miss our next one!
Follow these directions for your chance to win!

1. Post a link to this blog post on your blog or website (Sorry - tweeting doesn't count.) Use this url: http://www.rockler.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/11/11/Short-on-Pen-Blanks--Try-These-Pen-Turning-Kits
2. Then come back here and post a link to your blog or website in the comments below.
3. That's it! The first ten commenters who have linked back to this post will win five free wood pen blanks. And on Monday, November 16th, one lucky commenter (chosen at random from all the commenters who linked), will win their choice of two free pen kits. Choose from the Carbara or Sierra lines!

How can woodworking help you as you grow older? Well, we know that as we age, our minds change. For most people, the ability to process information gradually slows down. You hear a lot about how important it is for older people to engage in brain-healthy activities like crossword puzzles, reading, and playing games.

Interestingly, more and more people are coming to realize the mental benefits of woodworking as a pasttime. A hobby like woodworking, that stimulates the mind through complex measurements, visualization and creative problem solving, can have significant positive effects on the aging brain.

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To wrap up Woodworking Safety Week, we've got tips, a unique safety item and a picture (a drawing-- don't worry) that'll scare you safe.

First, a quick sampling of "most important" safety tips culled from some of the woodworkers around our corporate office today:

• Jim C., Merchandising, sagely warns us:
  Don't run with a sharp chisel.
  Thanks, Jim--that's just what Mom always used to say.
• Joe K., Merchandising, has a tip from personal experience:
  I wear glasses and have done so since the age of three. I can honestly say that without my glasses, I would be blind in both eyes from projectiles that have struck my lenses while working with tools. My tip is always wear safety glasses when working with any tool, woodworking or otherwise.

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What's better than a free woodworking plan? How about a free woodworking plan that's doable in a weekend, doesn't require Norm's shop, and doesn't leave you hunting around for obscure materials or strange, exotic hardware items. That, we think, is what makes Rockler E-Z Plans such a perennial favorite. Perfect for woodworkers with beginning to intermediate skill, the free E-Z Plans lean toward compact projects that require only affordable, readily available materials, nearly all of which can be purchased right here on the Rockler website.

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A cabinet installation can be a big job, but for all except the most involved projects, it’s nothing that any reasonably handy person needs to fear. There are just a few pitfalls and gotchas to watch for. With a little forethought and a few specialized tools and supplies, there’s no reason to expect anything but a smooth successful experience. Here’s a quick checklist of some of the most important considerations.

“Planning” is without a doubt the single most important word in a cabinet installer’s vocabulary. For the best chance at success, you'll need to have an adequate plan for everything from plumbing rough-ins to under-cabinet lighting. In fact, before you start screwing the cabinets in place, it’s a good idea to know the installation space on an intimate level. Get out a tape measure, level and angle finder and spend some time mapping out the location of humps and sags in the floor and walls, the direction and degree of any slope in the floor or the tip in the walls and irregularities in the angles where walls meet.

The general rule of thumb is this: cabinets are straight; rooms are – by and large - somewhat crooked. The cabinet installer’s job is to find the best possible compromise between these two incompatible conditions. With an adequate understanding of the installation space, you’ll avoid unpleasant surprises and know ahead of time where to shim - and possibly even where to fudge a little on plumb and level - to make the best possible resolution of conflicts between the shape of the cabinets and the shape of the room.

With a thorough plan in hand, layout lines and stud locations marked off, and all of the measurements double checked, all that’s left is the actual work. Where should you begin? There are many strategies that could work well. In general, it makes the most sense to start a run of cabinets at one end, and work your way to the other. Runs that terminate in a corner of the room should almost always be started in the corner. If both upper and lower cabinets are involved, most installers would suggest starting with the uppers. That way, you won’t have to lean in over the deeper lower cabinets while you install the uppers, and you won’t run the risk of damaging the lowers in the process.

To get started, you’ll need some way of holding the cabinets in place while you level them and screw them down. Unless you have a crew at your disposal – or a couple of very willing and fairly strong friends – you’ll need a mechanical means of support. The T-Jak Support System is made for the purpose, and has a number of advantages over the typical quick and dirty shop-built cabinet jack. A quick release height adjustment mechanism makes it easy to get the support plate near the correct height, and the fine tuning height adjustment knob makes it just a simple to get your cabinets positioned exactly on the line. The T-Jak Support System also has a sturdy, stable upper and lower support plate, both of which are pre-drilled with screw holes in case you want to add your own larger or “custom” support.

The fastening process itself is fairly straightforward. You’ll need to attach the cabinets securely to the wall studs and to each other. If you’re working by yourself or with minimal help, a sensible approach is to begin by getting one cabinet shimmed, lined up as well as possible and screwed to the wall (remembering that mistakes in the position of the first cabinet tend to multiply as you add more cabinets to the run). Then move the second cabinet into position and attach it to first cabinet, before firmly attaching it to the wall. Doing things this way makes it easier to get the highly visible joint between cabinets to come out tight and accurately aligned.

Getting the cabinets attached to one another correctly, unfortunately, turns out to be one of the more demanding tasks in the installation process. To get a good joint, it is absolutely necessary to clamp the cabinets together in exactly the right position before driving in the screws. Doing so can be something of a challenge. For face frame cabinets, a set of Cabinet Claw Clamps is hands-down the best helper. These specially designed clamps hook around the back of the face frame and apply pressure both to the sides of the frames to hold them together, and to the front to bring the surfaces flush. They’re easy to operate with one hand and have the added feature of a drill guide for accurately centered pilot hole drilling.

If you’re planning to install only a few cabinets, and a set of dedicated cabinet clamps seems like an extravagance, hand screw clamps are the next best thing. This woodshop standard has a million uses, and works better for cabinet installation than other types of clamp – it’s also an excellent choice for frameless cabinets. The large wooden clamping jaws are easy on the cabinet surface while still applying enough pressure hold the edges tightly together. They’re also comparatively easy to operate with one hand.

For attaching solid wood face frames to one another, a standard countersunk wood screw is perfectly acceptable. Using a Lube Finished Screw with square or square / X drive will save on fatigue and make it easier to get the screws snugged down tight. If you don’t already own one, you’ll need a countersink as well. This is another common tool – one that you’ll use time and again on other projects, so consider picking up a good one. A Rockler tapered countersink will save you the trouble of drilling separate pilot and clearance hole, and is designed to produce the cleanest possible hole edges.

For attaching frameless cabinets to one another, and for attaching cabinets to a wall, standard wood screws may not be your best bet. Today - unless you’ve built the cabinets yourself - you’ll be relying, almost certainly, on a piece of particleboard or MDF to hold your heavy cabinets and all their contents to the wall, and for frameless cabinets, to hold one cabinet to the next. These man-made materials have many fine properties – unfortunately, standing up well to the stress produced by the head of a typical countersunk screw is not among them. In fact, it is surprisingly easy to inadvertently drive a typical wood screw well past the surface of these materials, leaving an ugly, ragged hole and a seriously compromised attachment point in your wake.

The large, flat head of a Powerhead screw distributes force much more sensibly for these types of materials, all but eliminating the chance of a pull-through. As an added feature, they have cutting nibs on the underside of their heads. When the screws are driven with an impact driver, the nibs cut away enough material to sink the screw flush with the surface of the material. The head can then be covered with a 9/16” self-stick screw cap made of either white melamine or wood veneer for a clean, finished look. For an even more refined look, the Custom Screw Cap Punch Kit lets you make screw caps out of any material you desire. The handy stopped counter sink bit that comes with the kit pre-drills a counter bore that puts the cap exactly flush with the surface of the material for practically undetectable cabinet fastening.

Of course, getting the cabinets set isn’t the entire battle. You’ll still have work to do installing trim and toe kick, choosing and installing knobs and pulls, installing lighting and so forth. But with a tight, clean installation to work from, and the bulk of the work behind you, the finishing touches will feel like a breeze.

If you've recently purchased a router table, a table saw or any other stationary power tool, you may have noticed that your new prized possession didn't arrive with every related (and often, very desirable) piece of equipment imaginable already in the box. Don't feel cheated. By convention, power tools come with the equipment necessary to perform their basic functions safely, under typical operating conditions - and that's about it. Ultimately, most power tool owners discover that a few items in the "power tool accessories" department that rarely come standard, are difficult to do without. Fortunately, the power tool add-ons that most woodworkers call "indispensable" don't cost an arm and a leg. Some of the best are very affordable to buy ready-made, or can be made without too much trouble in the shop. The humble "feather board" is a prime example.

If you haven't had the opportunity to use one, a featherboard is the most common member of a family of mechanical hold-down devices designed to help hold stock up against a tool's surface or fence while it’s cut of otherwise machined. In its simplest form, a featherboard is a shop-made device cut from a piece of straight grained, 3" - 6" wide scrap. To make one, you simply crosscut the board at approximately 30 degrees and then make a series of stopped cuts in the direction of the grain roughly 1/8" apart. The end result should be a series of flexible "fingers" running across angled end of the board.

A featherboard actually serves two purposes. As mentioned, it helps hold the stock up tight against the surface of tool or fence while you run it through. In most cases, a featherboard is able to do a better job than a human operator of keeping the stock on track. A featherboard has just one job – to apply and even, consistent pressure. It doesn't have to worry about such things as changing hand positions to keep the stock moving, or keeping up the appropriate feed rate. Along with that, a featherboard can be positioned closer to the action than human finger should ever venture, applying pressure where it is most effective and least likely to be overcome by vibration. Together, these advantages make a featherboard or other mechanical hold-down device just about indispensable for delicate edge forming, grooving and rabbeting operations.

Using a featherboard also offers safety benefits. Because of the angled orientation of its fingers, when a featherboard is set up to apply a gentle pressure, it will allow stock to move easily in the direction of the cut while all but preventing movement in reverse.  And while it should be noted that they are not a replacement for the riving knife and anti-kickback pawls that now come standard with most table saws, featherboards do provide significant kickback insurance. 

Should you make your own featherboards, or buy them ready-made? Making your own is a viable choice: A shop-made featherboard can work just as well and a store-bought model, and of course they're virtually cost-free. But like most things, there are a couple of tradeoffs:  Featherboards aren’t particularly hard to make, but they don’t make themselves. Depending on your how much enjoyment you get out of making jigs, and how much shop-time you have on hand, you may decide that the chance to get on with your work outweighs the modest cost of a store-bought model.  More to the point, shop-made featherboards are typically much less user-friendly than ready-made varieties. If you’re planning to simply clamp a basic shop-made featherboard in place, remember that you have to do that while you hold it in a position that exerts a slight pressure on a representative piece of the stock.  That, in itself, can involve a bit of surprisingly awkward one-handed clamping.

Getting the featherboard secured in the right place can be especially difficult when the goal is to clamp it to the surface of the tool; most table saw beds and router table tops just weren’t designed to make the process easy and convenient. Rockler Table Featherboards, on the other hand, side-step the clamping problem. Their miter slot hold-down bars expand to clamp the featherboard firmly into a standard 3/4’’ x 3/8’’ miter slot and secure its position simultaneously, with the turn of a couple of knobs.

Rockler featherboards also make more involved set-ups much easier. One featherboard isn't always enough; occasionally, you need "stacked" featherboards.  When you're running stock vertically along the fence - as in the case of cutting raised panels with a vertical panel-raising bit - you need the extra support of a second featherboard up near the top of the fence. The second featherboard ensures that the entire face of the stock will stay in contact with the fence, and not just the bottom edge. A perfect companion to our popular Deluxe Router Router Fence, the Rockler Double Featherboard Kit lets you position two perfectly aligned featherboards one on top of the other with the same quick and easy turn of a knob. And if you already own the basic kit, the Rockler Retrofit Double Featherboard Kit lets you do it for considerably less.

Last week, we ran through basics of drilling European hinge cup holes and pointed out a few tools that make the operation easy and accurate. This week, we’ll continue with a few tips on the remainder of the hinge installation process, picking up where we left off.

With the hinge cup holes drilled, you’re ready to begin laying out the location of the hinge mounting plates on the cabinet. The goal of this step is to lay out the hinge mounting plate locations so that they correspond correctly with the location of the hinge cup holes on the door. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. With the help of the hinge instructions and a little arithmetic, you can measure and lay out all of the hinge mounting plate screw locations in advance. As an alternative, here’s a fairly easy method that requires almost no math, very little measuring and is guaranteed to work:

Here's a typical layout for a face frame overlay hinge. Most face frame hinge mounting plates have tabs that align the plate with the edge of the face frame. Either the edge of the cup hole or the center can be used as a reference for the vertical position of the mounting plate on the cabinet. The fractional approximations given are perfectly adequate for the purpose of installing hinges.

To begin, you’ll need to recall (or measure) the position of the top hinge cup hole-center in relation to the top of the door. Once you have the measurement, measure down from the top of the door and make a light mark on the back edge (for overlay doors) or front (for inset doors) of the door corresponding to the center-point of the cup hole. To avoid having to erase a pencil mark later, stick a strip of masking tape in the general location of the hole beforehand.

Now, hold the door up on the front of the cabinet in the correct vertical position (with the top and bottom edge of the door overlapping the front of the cabinet by 1/2” for a 1/2” overlay door, for example) and transfer the cup hole center mark to the front edge of the cabinet.

Once the center point of the hinge cup hole is transferred to the edge of the face frame, determining the topmost screw hole position is just a matter of measuring up 16mm for most European hinges.

Next, you’ll need to know the location of the topmost screw hole in relation to the cup hole center mark. Thanks to the standardization of European hinges, you can virtually count on the mounting plate screw holes being 32mm apart on center. So, the vertical position of the topmost screw hole will be 32mm/2 = 16mm up from the cup hole-center. Measure up and mark the top screw’s vertical location on the inside edge of the face frame or cabinet wall (5/8” is a perfectly acceptable equivalent for 16mm, if you’re more comfortable with fractional notation). As you’ll see later, this is the only crucial vertical measurement you’ll need to make.

You’ll also need to know how far in form the front edge of the cabinet to position the mounting plates. For face frame cabinets, this is usually simple. Most Euro style face frame hinge plates/brackets have small tabs that align with the edge of the face frame. To position them, you simply hold them up on the cabinet face frame in the correct vertical position and use them as a template to mark the location, or to save a little time, as a pilot hole drilling template for a self-centering bit. If you’re installing face frame hinges, do that now, drilling or marking just the topmost screw hole for the time being.

For frameless cabinets, the distance from the front edge of the cabinet to the screw holes can be measured, following the hinge instructions. Here, a Rockler  Jig-It Template for mounting plates speeds up the process. Click and scroll down to see a list of Jig-It Templates and campatible hinges.

For frameless cabinet hinges, either refer to the instructions for the correct screw hole location, or use a handy Rockler Jig-It Template for Mounting Plates. In the case of frameless cabinets, it speeds things up to mark a line at the correct distance in from the edge of the cabinet in the general location of both hinge mounting plates at this time. Take a rough measurement of the vertical location of the bottom hinge and mark a line at the correct distance in from the edge of the cabinet for the bottom hinge plate screw holes. Then mark a "distance in" line for the top hinge and use a square to transfer the vertical position you've established for the topmost screw to the correct location on the interior cabinet wall. As with face frame hinges, drill the just topmost pilot hole of the topmost hinge for now.

Now it’s time to attach the hinges to the door. There’s nothing particularly complicated here, but you will want to make sure that the hinge arm is at a 90 degree angle to the edge of the door. Using a square to align the edge of the hinge cup plates with the top and bottom edges of the door works well (assuming the doors are square). It’s also a good idea to drill pilot holes for the screws using a #6 self centering bit. The self-centering bit ensures that the screws will be centered and won’t pull the hinge out of alignment when they seat.

With the door hung by a single screw in the topmost screw hole, the remaining holes can be laid out using the hinge plates. For an even faster installation, use the hinge plates as a template and drill pilot holes with a self-centering drill bit.

Next, screw the top mounting plate to the cabinet using the single pilot hole you’ve made. You can do this with just the plate (which is the easiest course if you’re using clip-on hinges) or with the entire door with both hinges already attached. Either way, what you want to end up with is the door - with both hinges installed - suspended buy a lightly snugged down top hinge plate screw. This will allow you to use the actual location of the remaining mounting plate screw holes as a guide.

You’re task is almost done. Swing the door into position on the cabinet and use the hinge plates to as a template to either mark or drill the remaining pilot holes. With all of the pilot holes drilled, all that’s left is to unscrew the single hinge plate screw and remove the door, erase any marks or peel off the masking tape, re-attach the door to the cabinet and make adjustments as necessary.

Once you’ve been through it a couple of times, you can zip through the door hanging process is a few minutes. And, using any of the hinge cup jigs mentioned in last weeks post, you’ll have no trouble moving from undrilled doors to the finished product in less than half an hour.

When installing a European style hinge, drilling the hinge cup hole in the back of the cabinet door is the first and most crucial task. This sometimes puts people off. They imagine it has to be done with great precision and is therefore painstakingly difficult to achieve. They’re half right. Both the size and the placement of the hinge cup hole are extremely important to the end functioning of the hinge. But once you’re set up with a couple of specialized tools, the process isn’t much of a challenge. Even better, because European style hinges are highly standardized, getting set up to do it right is a one shot deal.

Luckily for all concerned, the vast majority of European hinge cups fit perfectly into single, 35mm-in-diameter sized hole. And the placement of the hole, while exacting, falls in one of two places for a great many popular hinges: centered on either 22.5mm or 20.5mm from the edge of the door. So, to install the cups of a huge variety of hinges, all you need to be able to do is consistently drill one size of hole in one of two spots.

In the cabinetmaking industry where time is of the essence, sophisticated methods for drilling hinge bores have long been in practice. For small operations and hobbyists, specialized jigs can yield every bit as accurate results in only a slightly longer time. Here are a few of our top choices, beginning with a system that’s been with us for a very long time.

The Concealed Hinges Jig-It System is available in its basic form for a total of around $40. This clever set-up consists of a drill guide outfitted with a long shank carbide Forstner bit and a steel template used to position the bit. Attached to the template are a 3/4” hardwood block, which acts a positioning stop, and a toggle clamp, which holds the template firmly in place.

The Jig-It sets up quickly. The steel template is predrilled on one side with screw holes that automatically center the cup hole at your choice of 20.5mm or 22.5mm from the edge of the door. On the other side of the template, two screw slots allow infinitely variable positioning of the hinge cup hole for anything that doesn't follow either of the two pre-set options. The drill guide comes with a 35mm carbide tipped Forstner bit already installed, a return spring to hold the bit up and out of the way until you’re ready to drill, and an adjustable stop collar, which comes pre-set to drill a hole at the very common depth of 13mm.

To use the jig, you position it in the desired spot along the edge of the door, clamp it in place – making certain that the wood stop block is up tight against the door’s back edge – fit the drill guide over the template and drill until the stop collar has fully compressed the return spring and you're prevented from going any farther. It’s that simple.

The vertical placement of the hinge cup holes – how far they are from the top and bottom of the door – is less crucial. For an average sized cabinet door, 3” from the top and bottom is common. Whatever you choose, it is important keep track of the distance from the top and bottom edge of the door to the center of the cup hole; you’ll need that dimension later on when you position the hinge plates on the cabinet.

When it comes to positioning the cup holes vertically on the edge of the door, it’s best to develop a system and stick with it. The Jig-It Multi Tool Rail, a modest upgrade from the original Jig-It system, can help with that. The Multi Tool Rail Master Pack comes with a 30” aluminum T-track and two drilling templates. The templates attach to the T-track with included T-bolts and knobs, allowing you to position two hinge cup holes at a time. There’s also a handy stop block, which is used to set the distance from the top or bottom of the door to the cup hole. It’s a great system for projects involving multiple doors of the same size. Just set the Multi Tool Rail up once and have at it. When it’s time to install the hinge plates, you’ll know that each and every door is set up with identically spaced hinge cup holes.

If a little extra speed and convenience are important, and you don’t mind spending a little more, the 35mm Euro Hinge Drilling Jig from Hettich offers a very slick system. The jig drills the standard 35mm cup hole and hinge screw pattern using three integrated, permanently mounted drill bits. All of the bits are powered by the same hex drive, so you can quickly drill all three holes without having to change tooling. The jig has indexed settings for a number of hinge cup tabs (“tab” is the term commonly used for the distance from the edge of the cup hole to the edge of the door). And it can be set up to drill either small pilot holes for hinges held in place with screws or the 8mm holes used with expansion dowel hinge installation.

If you own a drill press, you may prefer to use it to drill your hinge cup holes. The drill press method is quick and easy, and will insure that the cup holes are perpendicular to the surface of the door. The only thing that could possibly slow you down or pose a problem is the set up. You’ll need to position a fence on the drill press table that positions the door for the correct cup hole location. Rockler offers a number of handy UHMW plastic Hinge Cup Drilling Set Up Jigs that are designed just for the task.

Finally, here’s an option that doesn’t rely on a drill for cutting the hinge cup hole. With Rockler’s new Concealed Hinge Router Jig-It, you can buzz out 35mm cup holes quickly and efficiently with a plunge router. Like the Jig-It drilling jig, the Router Jig-It comes pre-drilled with screw holes to set up for holes centered on either 22.5mm or 20.5mm from the edge of the door.

Instead of clamping to the door, the Router Jig-It is screwed in place on the door using the hinge screw holes. While the screw-on template method may add a few seconds to the procedure, it does insure that the template will remain absolutely stock-still on the edge of the door, and because there is no clamping mechanism to contend with, you can lay the door completely flat and supported on your workbench during the process. When it’s time to install the hinge, you’ll have two perfectly aligned screw holes all set to go.

Which one should you get? If you frequently make multiple cabinets, the ability to drill two hinge cup holes with a single set-up afforded by the Multi Tool Rail Jig-It is a great thing to have. The 35mm Euro Hinge Drilling Jig from Hettich, although more expensive and limited to a single cup hole size, is fast, accurate and durable enough for thousands of hinges. For drill press owners, picking up a few Hinge Cup Drilling Set Up Jigs is the most affordable (although certainly not portable) way to go. And if you’re comfortable with a router, you won’t find a faster method for the actual cutting of the hole than Rockler’s new Concealed Hinge Router Jig-It. In the end, the choice really boils down to shades of difference in the procedure and the price. Whichever route you choose, you can expect the same results: perfectly sized and positioned cup holes for the most popular cabinet hinge on the planet. 

Pen turning has always attracted woodworkers with a taste for highly finished, eye-catching work and a need or desire to keep their investment in space, money and time to a minimum. With a compact set of tools and equipment and a very modest investment in supplies, almost anyone can be cranking out hand turned pens and other small turnings in a very short time, with results that are “as good as it gets.” Even if you only have a spare room or a tiny corner of your garage to call your shop, pen turning will allow you to work with a range of materials, and complete projects flawlessly and without cutting a single corner.

How do you get started? With most us watching our funds very closely right about now, we’re guessing the most useful information we can offer is advice that comes with a few un-glossed figures. Here’s everything you’ll need to start turning out pens - along with a variety of other turned projects - and a rough idea of what it’ll cost.

To get started with any type of turning you will, of course, need a lathe. A pen can be turned on just about any lathe, but for such diminutive projects, you’ll only need one of the smaller, more affordable varieties. The Excelsior Mini Lathe will only set you back about $250, and will give you the option to expand your woodturning endeavors to include spindles, bowls, plates and a variety of small to medium-sized turning projects.

For the price, the Excelsior is a surprisingly robust machine, with a 1/2 hp motor, vibration-absorbing cast iron construction, and a nearly 10’’ swing (the maximum diameter of stock that can be turned). It comes with everything necessary and important for most types of turning – five speeds, a bearing center for the tail stock, a spur center and face plate – and can even be lengthened with an optional bed extension to accommodate stock long enough for table legs and balusters. 

A standard lathe, like the original Excelsior, with speeds laid out in steps and a manual move-the-belt-form-one-pulley-to-the-next speed change method is typically the most affordable entry point into the world of pen turning - and perfectly adequate to the task. If you think you'll lake to woodturning with a vengeance, however, stepping up to a more versatile variable speed lathe is worth some thought. With Rockler's new Excelsior Variable-Speed Lathe, you'll be able to quickly dial in any speed you want from 760 to 3200 rpm. This simple convenience can save loads of time over the long haul, and will let you speedily jump from a slower speed bowl turning project all the way to a little high speed finishing on a narrow spindle. If a variable speed lathe sounds like the machine for you, here's a tip: Look for a great deal on the Excelsior Variable Speed Miniature Lathe at Rockler retail locations over this Thanksgiving weekend.

You’ll also need turning tools. Here again, you won’t need to spend a fortune (although you could!) An experience turner can turn a pen with nothing more than a skew chisel, but a beginner will have a much easier time of it by investing in a Pen Turning Set, which includes all of tools necessary for just about anything you’d ever want to do to a pen.

Beyond that, you’ll need the “raw materials”, a few specialized accessories and finishing supplies. The basic materials list consists of pen hardware kit and, of course, a pen blank. Rockler offers pen kits in varieties too numerous to describe in detail here. Each one contains all of the hardware parts the make the pen “go”. Look through Rockler’s selection and you’ll find a wonderful variety of single pen kits, sets and accessories, along with other turning projects that would be right up the alley of a mini lathe owner.

You’ll find an equally expansive selection of pen blanks, the basic building block of a hand turned pen. If you happen to own a drill press, in fact, you’ll find a selection of un-drilled blanks right at your fingertips that would take a very busy year to work your way through.

Before they are turned, undrilled blanks have to be sawn in two and then drilled through their center with reasonable precision to house the pen’s working components. The sawing can be done with a hand saw, but the drilling is a task best accomplished with the aid of a drill press. An indispensible woodworking tool in its own right, a drill press is worth considering for any aspiring woodworker. An affordable bench top model will easily handle the pen blank drilling job, and will pay endless dividends in any other area of woodworking you explore.

Even if a drill press isn’t in the picture right now, you’ll still have plenty of pen-turning options at you disposal. Ready-To-Turn Pen Blanks are pre-sawn, pre-drilled and have the requisite brass barrel liner already glued in place. In other words, they require virtually no preparation, making them a favorite among pen turners who prefer to skip right to the actual turning. They’re available in three pen sizes, and in a variety of colors and patterns in man-made acrylic material, and in bubinga solid hardwood.

Whether you choose the convenience of pre-drilled blanks, or the myriad options available in undrilled blanks, you’ll need one specialty piece of equipment to complete the package: a pen mandrel. The mandrel, together with a set of appropriately sized bushings, allows you to securely mount the prepared blank on the lathe. The correct size bushing is listed in each of Rockler’s pen kit offers, so there’s almost no chance of making a mistake. Together, the mandrel and a bushing set for any size of pen costs less than $25.

If you’re planning to cut and drill your own blanks, the Starter Pen Turning Kit is worth considering. It comes with everything you need to get started, including 3 hardware kits, a mandrel and bushing set, a drill bit, the CA glue necessary for gluing in the pen tube, and a pen mill, which makes truing up the ends of the prepared pen blanks a simple matter.

Once the blank is turned, it's on to the finishing process. For that, you’ll need a few supplies, beginning with sandpaper. As you develop skill with a skew chisel, you’ll find that your sanding cost and efforts will steadily decrease. But even if your first few efforts are a little rough, the size of the project and the fact that it is spinning on a lathe make the sanding process fairly quick and painless. The Woodturner’s Multi-Roll Sanding Pack contains 20 foot strips of 150, 240, 320 and 400 grit sandpaper – everything you’ll ever need for a small scale solid wood turning project.

The final finish for your pens will depend in part on your finishing preferences and in part on the type of blank you’ve used. Solid hardwood pens can be finished in the same way that any other turned wood project is finished. There are a number of excellent turned wood finishes available, a few different techniques, and many, many opinions on which ones work best. For a tradition turned wood finish, we hear great things about Behlen Woodturner’s Finish, Hut Wood Finish, and Hut Crystal Coat.

 Acrylic pen blanks don’t require a film finish and only need to be polished to the desired sheen. Some of the most interesting natural wood blanks are “resin stabilized”, meaning that they are impregnated with plastic resin to make them dimensionally stable, and in most cases, can be simply polished to a high sheen as well. The polishing process involves sanding with successively finer grits of abrasive until the pen blank material itself develops a glass-smooth surface. Once you’ve sanded your way through the sandpaper grits, Micro Mesh abrasives will take you to the rest of the way. Essentially a “high tech” sandpaper, Micromesh is available in grits ranging from 1500 to 12,000, and is designed to produce a nearly perfect scratch pattern. The 2” x 2” Cushioned Abrasive Set is ideal for shining up acrylic pens.

Finally, there’s the assembly process, which simply means pressing the pen tip and other hardware parts in place in the pen tube. The assembly process can be accomplished with bench vise, or even a Quick-Grip clamp. Pressing the pen parts together isn’t complicated, but it does require keeping the parts in correct alignment throughout. Rockler’s Pen Press/Drilling Jig is designed help keep the pen parts in alignment, and to make applying steady, even pressure easier. You can make pens without it, but the added piece of mind it affords during the (literally) make-or-break assembly process – and the way that it streamlines the blank drilling process – make it worthy of serious consideration.

And that’s it, you’re finished! What’s the tally? The Excelsior Mini Lathe, the Crown Tools Pen Turning Set, a mandrel and bushing set, a hardware kit, a pre-drilled pen blank, a $50 finishing budget, and a Quick-Grip clamp for the assembly process can be done from scratch for less than $500. This basic kit will let you continue with a number of pen turning options using pre-drilled blanks, and give you a great start on general wood turning. Assuming you already own a few basic tools – a saw, a square, a few clamps - adding a bench top drill press will give you one of woodworking’s core tools and greatly expanded pen turning options without pushing you past $700. Make $850 your target outlay, and you can throw in the Pen Press/Drilling Jig, a pen turning book and have money left over for materials.

With the holidays just around the corner, many of us have a couple of things in our immediate future: a little extra time to spend with our families, and a long, long list of holiday gifts to procure. This time around, with money in historically scant supply, most of us are looking for ways to stretch our holiday budget without having to skimp or compromise on the fun. For a woodworker, the gift part of the equation is easy: just head to the shop and start cranking out those beautiful, one-of-a-kind projects.

The weeks leading up to the holiday season are also a great time to share the woodworking experience. Helping a young member of the family get started with their first projects is a great opportunity to spend time together doing something you both enjoy. As a bonus, it can help an aspiring woodworker fill out a holiday gift list with wonderful stuff on a very modest budget. And it’s easy to do, even if you have limited experience and very few tools. Here are a couple of excellent resources to help you get underway.

In Woodworking for Kids: 40 Fabulous, Fun and Useful Things for Kids to Make, Kevin McGuire lays out a complete first course on woodworking for young people. The book covers everything from the basic properties of wood and practical woodworking skills to building shop furniture and a range of other woodworking projects. In language designed to be understood by kids, McGuire takes the reader in great detail through every step in constructing a workbench, a miter box, simple pieces of furniture, toys, folk sculpture, pet toys, and other interesting stuff.

None of the projects require the use of power tools, and most can be built with pieces of scrap wood, dowels and other materials available at any DIY store. As an example, a simple trivet project could be put together and finished in a couple of hours by anyone who can operate a drill and make a few basic cuts with a hand saw. The materials list consists of a 48” x 3/8” wood dowel, a 1 x 2 x 18” piece of lumber and wood glue. The tools required involve nothing more exotic than a coping saw and, a crosscut hand saw, a drill, a hammer and a clamp. Like the trivet project, even the more involve projects in the book steer clear of complicated joinery, difficult cuts, and all but the most readily available materials.

Carving for Kids, by Robin Edward Trudel, is another excellent starting point for young woodworkers. Beginning with projects safe and easy enough for very young children, the book covers a range of basic carving skills. Most of the projects can be completed with a single carving knife, sandpaper and small pieces of carving stock. Parents should be aware that some of the “roughing in” will require a coping saw and a clamp or vise, and may be too difficult for very young hands. Still, sticking with soft, easy to saw woods – such as basswood – will keep the preparation phase of nearly all the projects down to less than half an hour for nearly any adult.

Craft kits are another option, and often the best choice for kids and parents with no woodworking experience whatsoever. The Clock Making for Kids Craft Kit comes with everything necessary to complete the project in ready-to-assemble form, including the clock’s moving parts, a wooden clock face, self-stick numbers, traceable decorative patterns, and colored markers. In less than an hour, kids as young as ten can have the satisfaction of completing an entire project, and a handsome gift to show for their efforts.

Wood burning craft kits offer and easy introduction to the art of pyrography. Best for kids 12 to 14 and up, wood burning is easy to master and because the kits come with transferable patterns, don’t require a tremendous amount artistic experience or skill. Both the Woodburning for Kids Craft Kit and the Deluxe Woodburning Kit come with everything you need to complete projects, including two ready to use basswood plaques. The Deluxe Kit also includes four burning points for a variety of effects, and six colored pencils for added decoration.

Nearly all of the projects mentioned here require some degree of adult involvement, but that’s really the best part. Working together with an aspiring young woodworker is a great way to spend an afternoon and an opportunity to collaborate on useful, gift-able projects, each one invested with a personal touch that money just can’t buy.