Magic Wand That Turns Into Pen
Introduction: Magic Wand That Turns Into Pen
I think like a lot of people once you get exposed to <PERSON> can't wait to get a wand. Last year our family went to Universal Studios Orlando and visited Ollivander's Wand shop and both my kids got to pick a wand. It was a great day, and they were super excited waving the wand around casting spells and pretending to battle one another. However, I noticed that once we returned home the wands went up on a shelf and they hardly touched them. I was hopeful they would play with them a bit more but alas they sat on the shelf gathering dust.
One day while making a pen on my lathe I thought it might be a neat idea to combine the pen and the wand. Naturally I searched online for "wand pen" and found a few results but the majority were plastic, and most were made so that the pen tip just stuck out of the tip of the wand or the bottom of the handle. It was obvious they were wands, this sort of ruins the illusion of the wand. There were some that were nicer plastic versions, but they were not full-sized wands. The bottom line is they all kind of looked cheap and fake. So, I decided to try and make a pen wand/wand pen, out of wood, that concealed the pen in the handle section of the wand and still looked like a wand. The following Instructable describes my process.
Supplies
1 x 1 x 17-1/2 inch piece of Hardwood - Walnut etc.,
Wood Lathe
Pen Jaws
Lathe Tools
Center Finding Jig
Ice Pick or Awl
Table Saw
Pencil
Slimline Pen Kit
Pen Clamp
Thick Leather Scrap Piece 2" x 3"
mm Drill Bit
5/16 Drill Bit
5/16 Brass Tube
Sandpaper (80, 150, 220, 400, 600, 1000, 2000 grits)
Danish Oil
Paper Towels
5-minute Epoxy
Portable Bandsaw Table
Hacksaw
Step 1:
I don't live near a Hardwood dealer so whenever I need a small amount of hardwood, I purchase it from Ebay. I found a seller that offers 20pcs of 1x1x24 inch mixed hardwood for about $31 shipped. That works out to about $1.55 per piece which I think is a good deal. These are off cuts so they are not perfect but considering that they will be turned they have more than enough material for me to use.
The first thing I do is use my center finding jig and an ice pick to mark the center of both ends of the wood. This particular center finding jig I 3d printed from a file I found on Thingiverse. 622
If you do not have a center finding jig you can just use a ruler to mark the diagonal lines.
Step 2:
To save some time I use my table saw tilted to 45 degrees to cut off the 4 corners of my stock. This leaves me with a hexagonal shape that I find easier to turn. It doesn't have to be perfect as long as you knock down the corners.
Step 3:
Next, I chuck the wood stock in between a pair of pen jaws and a live center. I line up the live center point with my center mark on end of the wood. I try to make sure that my stock is even or is as horizontal as possible. After tightening the tail stock, I will turn on the lathe to see if the wood is balanced. If it is wobbling around, I will readjust it in the chuck and recheck. Once I am pleased with the way the wood is spinning, I will make sure everything is snug.
Step 4:
The first thing I do is knock off the sides and round everything over, using my square tipped carbide cutter. The goal here is to get the rough shape of the wand, thick at the handle and then tapered towards the tip.
Since this is a long piece, the wand can have some wobble in the center because it is unsupported. This usually becomes evident by the sound the cutter makes. To stabilize the wood, I use a folded-up cotton towel to loosely hold the piece with my non-tool hand while my tool hand makes the cut. This can be a bit tricky and takes some getting used too; you don't want a long piece of towel that can get caught and wrap around the wood as it turns. The piece of towel I use is about 5 inches long and folded into thirds. Its folded over because it gets quite hot with the friction which, you will feel if you are gripping the wood too tightly. You aren't squeezing the wood with the towel; you are just sort of gently holding it to keep it steady as you run the lathe tool across the wood. 599