7mm Pen Mill/Barrel Trimmer For Pen Kits

Great tool for pen preparation!

The drill & miller collar wok great

I'm not really sure why it's called a barrel trimmer, it's best used for truing up blanks. *note* When using this tool I usually have to follow with a stepping bit as for second reason it creates a tapered end on the barrel that prevents it from slugging on the mandrel. With that note in mind, this took saves me hours of hearty ache.

Cuts cleanly and quickly. I later bought a separate but similar kit that had several different size bores/guides for turning different types of pens. I wish I would have just spent the money in the first place and bought the second kit instead, but at least now I have some spare parts.Note: This does NOT replace the need for a drill bit to pre-drill holes in the blanks for the brass tubes. This is for cleaning any residual glue out of the brass tubes and for flush-cutting the wood with the tube.Second note: This doesn't slow down much or push back much when you hit the brass tube, so it's entirely possible to shorten the tubes. Be cautious and check your work frequently.

Perfect fit and design. One of my biggest downfall in woodturning pens is getting a good flat face to accomplish a flush fit pen or pencil. The set screw on this mandrel is of good quality and I have not had it back off on me once, even after 50 plus pen blanks. It creates a very smooth, non-burning, flat face on any wood type, hard, soft, exotic, composite, and yes, acrylic too. You have to apply a little more pressure for the harder material, which is not a big deal since this retains its sharp edge for a very long time.

Arrived promptly. Was apprehensive as to the functionality based on some of the marginal and negative reviews. Either they got a "bad" one or have operator problems. My pen mill worked great. Not a problem at all and I'm so impressed that I may start using this as my source for mills for myself and my students.

Great barrel trimmer, I use everytime I square off the ends of my pen blanks. Fits into a jacobs chuck well that I use on my lathe. It also cuts very well. There is no scorching on the wood/acrylic, unlike other trimmers.

Against my better judgement, I bought this kit with hopes the 50+% of people just "got a bad batch."The good first:It wasn't a scam, the product actually showed up.All the listed parts were there, although I am not sure why they felt the need to include a pen barrel.. guilty conscience due to the unbelievably poor manufacturing process? To call it a 7 piece kit rather than a 6 piece kit I guess. Why not include the set screw and the 2 plastic halves of the case and call it 10 piece?All parts are made of what appears to be steel.Unlike many others, the reemer shanks all appear to be relatively straight., and they are extremely sharp (which is ironic as they are meant to clear out glue and small burrs which is better done by a much shallower cutting angleThe bad:The main reason anyone would buy one of these, the cutter head to square up the pen barrel to the blank, is machined worse than anything I have ever come across. The flutes look like they were cut by a 5" hand grinder with a broken grinding wheel. Really terrible, I honestly can't believe The Woodturning Store offers these for sale.The bad fluting work aside, the cutting edge bevels (if that's what you want to call it) isn't blunted, it is jagged, chipped and uneven like someone was trying to mill a block of concrete with it. I could understand if it was just a quick preliminary grind that wasn't honed, but this is ridiculous. In order to sharpen the 4 edges I would likely have to take 1/16" of material off just to get rid of the chips on the cutting edge.So now that we have established the main component of the barrel trimmer is completely unusable out of the box, how about the barrel reemers? As I said before, mine are all straight, but I don't doubt that many are not. The real issue with these is the fluting process for these (again zero QC or function check) caused the the leading and trailing edge of the reemer to be pushed out in the form of 2 sharp burrs. If you were to go straight out of box and try to run these through a glued pen blank/barrel they would completely destroy the barrel. Yes, they can be fixed, but why is junk like this leaving a factory in this condition?As others have said, don't buy this. The fact that The Woodturning Store HAS to know about these issues and continues to sell them which is cause for alarm. I haven't decided if I am going to try and sharpen the trimmer and unsharpen the reemer or just throw this in the trash where it belongs. I have a feeling the steel is such bad quality it wont trim the ends for a single pen kit before becoming uselessly dull. Not worth my time and effort to ship it back, along with knowing some other person might end up with it.