A pen -- with Leather (?!)

osx-addict · Post by **osx-addict** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:55 pm

I did a quickie search for corn-cob pen and found this link.. Very interesting.. I'll have to try a few of these..

By the way, that site has some other interesting articles..

nuhobby · Post by **nuhobby** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 8:09 pm

woodburner wrote:That is a different version for sure. May I ask, "why don't you ever want to try your hand at it again?"

Gents, thanks for your comments and enhancing this thread with the other types of pens!
For my part the leather pen was much more frustrating than a wooden pen. If I had ever got a real good cut going on the lathe, I would have had a slimmer cigar pen. As it was I ran out of patience; frequently the leather was squishing sideways as much as it was being cut. Could be I'd get better with practice and experimentation, but probably I'll go back to wood pens as the mainstay.

P.S. I am daydreaming about converting one old Mark V to the "Pen Station" posted earlier by Mark.

robinson46176 · Post by **robinson46176** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 9:14 pm

When you are turning stacked leather avoid using lathe tools and instead use very coarse sanding tools for shaping (followed by the usual series of finer grits).
These Roloc disk and mandrels as in the link below are very common in automotive work and are good for a lot of things.
I have never turned a leather pen but I have built and rebuilt a few thousand stacked leather heels.

You are better off with old hard dry scraps and then you can soak them in something like highly thinned varnish etc. so it will firm up. There is a product sold for repairing old chair rungs (I forget its name) that soaks in and sets up and expands the tenon to make it tight again. Something like that might improve turning of soft stuff.

http://www.levineautoparts.com/clicherfor3m.html?gclid=CKfn-MGv75oCFQIyxwodVgZbjQ