My provider has me on reduced rations I just exceeded my 5 gigabytes per month on my plan with bigpond.com now for 2 more days go slow.
Years ago I pioneered this pen and Ed Brown of Exotic Blanks in the US jumped on the bandwagon ages after I placed one on the IAP Site Forum in the US and had a guy manufacture the ReBar Blanks saying a mate of his discovered them bla bla. Now Ed and I had become friends over time so I sent him a rev saying what part of originator dont you understand giving him the release date as a couple of yrs before his revelation he apologised and said sorry mate.
Now I have no ill feelings re this but burned up with the brand new release chat etc so he said I will make them in your name and give you a commission, this I declined and said all the best so he marketed them for Sierras. His blanks were drilled out and used without brass sleeves in to quote his two page release "As most of the interior portion of the rebar has been removed, these are not as heavy as you think. The finished pen weighs in at about 4-10th of an ounce heavier than one sporting an acrylic blank" This in the middle of 2011.
There is no need of a tute simply drill the hole to suit your pen blank in rebar nearest this size, I found using centre bands for Streamline kits a slight champher to the centre band and a half taper to the pen tip, a champher to the top clip end on my old metal lathe.
There is a degree of difficulty in a three jaw chuck but easily overcome by careful clamping the bar in different positions to hold in the chuck to run it concentrically.
Go to a steel seller and ask for bending grade rebar scraps the bending rebar is softer than the stuff they lay for length not bending.
If this sounds daunting then so what its not for you, maybe metal work is a pain welding a no no no great loss there are thousands of other ways to skin a rabbit.
Think of my mates in the US going every year to a Rattle Snake Stampede where they round up untold numbers in Texas of various rattlers types, kill and skin take home and tan the leather then utilize the leather for Snake Skin Pens makes drilling a few holes etc for a rebar pen look like a doddle in the park to me.
My worry is I see a pen in so many common use objects like Dental Handpieces, Straight Air Guns,dozens of other items spend time in huge hardware stores gazing in the shelves for inspiration.
For a real challenge have a look at contributions made on the US Forum IAP made by Skiprat, Steven is a UK man from around London who designs, makes pens with Stainless Steel creating scarf joints like the ones on Pool Sticks in metal he and I have become friends over the years and I admire his incredible aptitude he used to do all his making on a very simple wood lathe using metals.
Now the ethics when seeing work by this great guy is never to ask how did you do it cause over a period of time he and all of us tend to show sufficient to do most anything reserving some techniques because they simply are dangerous to untrained or ill equipped folk and in this litigeous socity there are huge numbers of bumblers seeking to destroy people with law suits.
These days as a sparky I will never install any electrical gear anywhere cause soon as I do the rest of the house or workshop falls under my supervision at law, have a fire from your faulty wiring I go to gaol under some circumstances if you as the homeowner press charges, some people say but he was licensed and did the job.
Now if you at home or workshop owner wire a plug top incorrectly seems thats ok even when it can cause serious injury, indeed when I buy leads I always check polarity between the plug and the outlet, we built our own Church nearly 50 yrs ago by voluntary labour it took us two yrs that was when we bought lots of leads and I found a major one incorrectly wired in the factory. . Let me illustrate one incident on a worksite a brickies labourer almost in front of me mixing a batch of cement turned cartwheels in front of me I thought how amusing how wrong I was he suffered a severe electric shock causing the cartwheels through some kak handed misfit had reversed the active and earth wires to the lead to the mixer so the frame of the mixer was live 240 volts.
There were no incriminations whatever to the worksite people but every one suspected us sparkies on the job, the guy recovered but that huge lesson remains with me to this day.
Please be aware and careful I am trying to get a CD or DVD of our recent Wood Guild Exhibition my mate Ben made some larger bowls with gaps in the timber he said he went white with fear making a couple of them (very risky stuff) would like to show them to you. Woody the marvellous does this as well dont know if he goes pale with his sometimes open aired blanks I know my mate Ben is made of very stern stuff indeed.
I have been up since 3am feeling strange hence the time alone to try to express things on my mind re making things, building things, turning things please be carefull out there.
Kind regards Peter.
