Woodturning A Stave Segmented Pencil Cup From Pen Blanks

Pencil CupThis video is also uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, and FaceBook. Best right here.

This project video is a pencil cup to answer this month’s club challenge. While I could grab a chunk of solid wood, I want to do a segmented work. This time a stave segmentation.

My raw material is twelve pen blanks for the staves and some scrap walnut for a bottom and rim. My pencel cup is about five inches tall and almost three inches in diameter, finished with lacquer.

Each stave is cut to a trapezoid shape with 75 degree angles on each side. 75 is the complement of 15 degrees. 15 times 2 because it is cut on both sides, 12 staves is a complete circle.

I’m looking for a better stave cutting sled for my table saw. Please offer your suggestions. I used a Wixey digital angle finder to set my saw blade.

Enjoy!


8 Responses to “Woodturning A Stave Segmented Pencil Cup From Pen Blanks”

  1. Henk Mulder says:

    Hallo,maby you could use Bird mouth routerbits.

  2. John Rodriguez says:

    Love to watch what you turn
    Always fun.

  3. Walter Turchyn says:

    Very nice project, Alan. Many years ago, as a “learning piece”, I made a similar sized cup, just using regular spruce lumber. I don’t recall how I cut the staves, but as you did, I glued them up in small sections until I had two halves, then sanded the two mating surface flat. My largest Forstner bit wasn’t that large, but I used it to make the cylindrical hole, then scraped it out until I had a wall thickness of about 1/4″. I gave that cup away, so I don’t know if it is still being used. Thanks again for another educational video.

  4. Len says:

    I’d suggest using a 15 degree router bit vs the table saw for the small segments.