Turning materials

Hi Fred

I think you will have more input from the pen turners group, sorry I don't have the url for them but if you google for pen turners, I'm sure you will find them.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

I have turned it and have turned several other synthetics. The are easy to turn but you need a light touch out you will overhead and damage the blank.

Brian

Hey,

I turn a fair bit of corian, as well as Acrylics for pens and other small items. Overall they are fairly decent to work with. Typically they give off nice curly strips. However as it has already been stated. Becareful about applying too much presure as it will build up heat, and can even shatter. The main downside I find about working with composite materials can be the smell. I personally dont like the smell of turning Corian. But I really like the results so I just use good ventilation, and turn it during the warmer months of summer.

Donald Vivian

I think just about any material available has been spun into pens, pencils and all manner of deskware. Corian and some of its stablemates are acrylic blends of sorts with different things mixed in. In other words, they are fairly soft and plastic like. So are many resinous products like the harder plastics that are being cast at home these days. I have seen pens made of clear polycarbonate rod, and even pens made from really strange looking left over plastics from the scrap bin at our local plastic supply house.

But be careful. Something like Silestone is mostly quartz (as in the rock crystal) and it will tear your tools to pieces. If I recall, they claim 95% quartzite and only 5% resin for suspension.

Check these guys out for more:

It has been many years since I turned any pens but this thread brought to mind...

At the time I was doing it my wife was messing with Fimo, a clay-like plastic which bakes hard in the oven. She wrapped a Fimo design around several brass pen inserts, we baked them and then I turned it as if it were any other material. I recall that it worked well.

Bill

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