Club Meeting: 7 May 2025
Report by: Ian Connelly

Discussion started talking about the best wood to use. Glenn said he tried this process with wet wood, the issue was it was hard to drill and the hole closed up.

Dry wood, with straight grain seems to give better results, Glenn started with a black 40x40x300 mounted between centres.

He rounded this roughly, then mounted it is a chuck, ensuring it was centered by bringing up the tailstock.

He did a little bit of a tidy up of the rounding with the skew.

There was quite a discussion between Glenn and the audience about the process of drilling out the pipe and trying to stay on centre.

A summary of the discussion: Past experience of people that had made single piece pens suggest that hand holding the drill is often better that using a jacobs chuck and take it many small increments to make sure that the swarf does not build up and drive the drill off course.

Glenn used a long drill in a jacobs chuck to drill the pipe, after swapping out a bent drill for a nice new straight one (always great to have a backup plan for a demo)

A pop rivet shell was then places in the hole, so that tailstock support could be restored without splitting the wood.

Glenn progressively turned the pipe down to approx 10mm.

Then it was time for a little more work on the cup – Glenn drilled the cup out with a 20mm forstner.

Then there was a check done to make sure that the hole in the cup and the hole in the pipe met – success!

Next Glenn cut off much of the excess around the cup with the bandsaw, the remainder is then carved away using a dremel.

To bend the pipe, a wire is inserted down the hole to prevent it closing and the pipe was simmered for 30 minutes in water in a frypan. It was then clamped in a jig and allowed to cool.

A great demo of something different, thanks Glenn.