Customer Reviews

Jet 709160 LCS-3P 3-Piece Pen Chisel Set

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Effective turning tools need length and weight as well as sharp steel. Small chisels may look right when you are making small things on a small lathe, but they will actually make the work harder. Your hands will have to do too much of the work that the leverage of a larger tool would do for you. This is true even if you've bought a lathe as limited as the Jet pen lathe.

A quarter inch gouge may be alright for beading, but most of the work a gouge does in pen turning is roughing out a shape, and a 3/8 or 1/2 gouge will make the work go much faster. The skew is the most important tool you will use, and half inch skews have a problem - they will catch more often than the larger edge of a full size skew. I use a 3/4 inch skew for pen making, ground to a slight curve.

All of these tools work well, but they are very limited and not particularly cheap. If you are going to do anything else besides pen turning you will need full sized tools anyway, so you should putting the cost of this set into buying the best chisels you can afford. In the long run you will save money and get better results.