Pen drilling jig

[Hitch]

Started off drilling my pen blanks by eye, not too bad on the larger wood blanks....
My drill press is a £40 jobbie, with about 35-40mm travel and has lots of give in it. Rubbish.
Then progressed onto some smaller ones and acrylic, so used the colchester lathe at work. Not brilliant, the guy that normally uses it is very untidy, so normally covered in oil and never find the tooling. Plus keep asking every week is a pain in the backside.

Decided I needed to make some kind of affair for drilling them using my lathe at home.
Drew a few creations, but didn't get round to making any.

Out in me garage, stumbled upon a cheapy cross vice i've had kicking about. A flash of inspiration, a bit of steel plate, bit of rod and a few bolts..... and I have this-

One annoyance is having to remove the vice from the plate when setting up, to get to the bolt....and I need to make a steady for the handle, to keep it inline.
Otherwise, works a treat. M12 csk bolts pick up on the t-nuts for the tool rest and tail stock.
Even tried it on drilling the very thin blanks, right down the middle 8)

 

[deserter]

Looks like a good invention, however I drill mine by putting the drill chuck into the tail stock of the lathe and holding the blank in my lathe chuck on the motor end. Then spin the material and advance the tail stock into it works great.

 

[Hitch]

I only have a jacobs type chuck for mine at the moment though.
Did keep looking at chucks and bits, to do it, on my wants list.
This little exercise cost me nothing

 

[jumps]

nicely put together

as you point out, in response to deserter, it's all about your skill set and what you have around the place!

what's the thread on your lathe spindle? I have an old 4 jaw (independent adjustments) chuck that would hold these sort of blanks OK 'lying around' that you can have for the cost of postage if it fits (and you want it) - then put your jacobs chuck in the tailstock. Not suggesting it would drill better though