When picking up supplies at Woodcraft, my daughter saw the acrylic pen blanks and they were beautiful. With Christmas coming up and knowing her fondness for drawing all the time, I told her she could pick out her favorite and I would make a pen for her.

It proceeded in the normal way – drilling out for the brass inserts, securing them with gorilla glue, flush-trimming the barrels. After turning them, I sanded them up through my finest grit, but they weren’t shining as well as I’d hoped. I added a little bit of polishing compound and carefully worked it over with a very small rag (it’s dangerous to use cloth on a lathe).

At times the friction was so great that it was actually melting the acrylic, which had to be cooled and sanded back from the beginning. So be careful to not overheat the blank. Some people use micromesh cooled in water to polish up their acrylic pen blanks, and I think that’s what I’ll do in the future as well.