Another Apprentice Pen

I bought another Apprentice kit from Woodturner’s Catalog, and mated it to a Woodturningz.com Acrylic blank. It’s Pewter and Orange for a great match to the gunmetal kit. The blank turned beautifully now that I am using a carbide tipped spindle gouge. The acrylic just was eating up the edges on my HSS tools.

I need to try a skew chisel for acrylic next time, and see if I can get traction “peeling” layers off of the blank. Anyone else doing work on acrylic blanks who can suggest some best practices?

The Apprentice kit was inexpensive, but the fit and finish is clearly not as good as the premium kits. This pen works fine, but you can easily over-turn the twist mechanism. Works great for me, but I wouldn’t want to sell any pens based on this kit.

-- Mark, Florida, http://penturner.wordpress.com/