# Need A parting Tool To Make Segmented blanks



## bobs pens 1 (Apr 30, 2013)

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/crown-one-one-eight-inch-diamond-parting-tool-1.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_43nB2zTX8

Video I found: Is there such a video for pen makers on how to use a parting tool to make say a three to six mm segment for a blue and white segmented pen?

Your help needed: I am in the market to purchase a real good parting tool to try to cut segments to make a segment style pen. I did find one video on U tube where a fellow shows how to use the parting tool on a large piece of wood on his lathe. He suggested a 3/8 inch diamond parting tool. Would a smaller one work even better for pen blanks?
Would you recommend a good tool for a beginner to start working on?
If there is a discussion on this forum maybe you show me where it may be so I can read it.
I am sure many of us beginners have the same problem as I do I need to see how some of your methods are done by picture or video and then go to the shop and try to do this.
In my experience in life I have found many of the good craftsman's or artists are Visual in nature and maybe because I am a Visual person that is why I need instructions on how to do something on a video or in print.
Look forward to your suggestions. bob


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## Rick_G (Apr 30, 2013)

I made my own for pens using old blades from my thickness planer.  After I ground the sharp edge off each side I wound up with a tool about 1/4 inch wide and about 1/8 inch thick.  For bottle stopper size blanks and smaller it works great.  Getting ready to make another now as I've used this one enough it's starting to get to short.  the blades are HSS so if you know someone with a thickness planer using replaceable blades there could be a source of free steel.


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## Haynie (Apr 30, 2013)

.  I have no idea about a specific tool but I use a hacksaw or a regular saw sometimes.  I have not found a thin enough parting tool.  Why are parting tools so thick?


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## jttheclockman (Apr 30, 2013)

Why do you need a parting tool to do segmenting work on a pen. Do you have a bandsaw or a tablesaw to cut slices off??  If that is what you are doing. Remember after you use a parting tool you now have to true the ends. Just curious.


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## jttheclockman (Apr 30, 2013)

Haynie said:


> . I have no idea about a specific tool but I use a hacksaw or a regular saw sometimes. I have not found a thin enough parting tool. Why are parting tools so thick?


 

They have 1/16" parting tools. Any thinner than that you will have flex in the blade. Some people use hacksaw blades ground down.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 1, 2013)

Thanks for your reply. I have been told many use a parting tool to make these thin cuts. To me it takes tremendous skill to get these true so when you glue the ends they will look like a one pice blank.
I am working on my table saw today with a home made jig Pen Blank Table Saw Sled Jig - by LarryDNJR @ LumberJocks.com ~ woodworking community to push the blank into the blade to see if I can get real true cuts say 6 to 8 mm in length. I also have a miter saw with a new fine tooth blade used for plastic which should also make cuts true. 

I have a friend who is in the picture frame business and makes the perfect looking corners on his picture frames. I do not know what kind of saw he uses or tricks to get his corners so true.

I also, saw a saw on the internet last night that is a hand saw used for picture frame cuts that should give also true even segments.

The other question is if you had a good table saw or miter saw what new blade would you buy so you would get better cuts or more even cuts than the stock blade that comes with the saw. I have a table saw I got for Christmas about three years ago from Home Depot about a $300. model. A saw of this quality should with the right blade make true correct segment cuts that I am looking for.

So I guess the next question is what would be a good blade for my saws to purchase. As always thanks for your advice. I am sure there are other beginners who are reading my questions and will learn from your advise.

Sears Craftsman Handsaw Miter Hand Saw w Box Kromedge 36184 881 36303 | eBay

I owned a saw like this years ago to make good true cuts. Do you think a saw like this would do the job or would you be better using a motorized saw?

bob


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## mikespenturningz (May 1, 2013)

I was thinking the same thing as John T. I am not using a parting tool at all for my segmenting? Not that a parting tool is not handy to have if I blow up a blank and need to segment in a piece then I would certainly use it but not for everyday segmenting?


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## MarkD (May 1, 2013)

bobs pens 1 said:


> Thanks for your reply. I have been told many use a parting tool to make these thin cuts. To me it takes tremendous skill to get these true so when you glue the ends they will look like a one pice blank.
> I am working on my table saw today with a home made jig Pen Blank Table Saw Sled Jig - by LarryDNJR @ LumberJocks.com ~ woodworking community to push the blank into the blade to see if I can get real true cuts say 6 to 8 mm in length. I also have a miter saw with a new fine tooth blade used for plastic which should also make cuts true.
> 
> I have a friend who is in the picture frame business and makes the perfect looking corners on his picture frames. I do not know what kind of saw he uses or tricks to get his corners so true.
> ...



I made the slicing  jig described in this library article :
http://content.penturners.org/library/tools_and_jigs/celticknotjig.pdf

It uses a threaded rod to determine the distance from the blade so it's very adjustable and repeatable. I made mine so that it cuts at 30, 45 and 90 degrees.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 1, 2013)

Freud LU94M008

Was at the local hardware store and a fellow showed me a old table saw that he uses in the back and gave me some suggestions.

Here is a blade that may be the best blade to cut my plastic blanks for this process.

Freud has very good blades

Don't know if this is over kill or not.

Freud LU94M008 8-Inch 64 Tooth MTCG Plexiglass Cutting Saw Blade with 5/8-Inch Arbor - Amazon.com

also he said this would even improve the blade on the table saw what do you think?

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Freud SC-001 3-1/2-Inch Blade Stabilizer with 5/8-Inch Arbor for 7-Inch Saws or Larger


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## Haynie (May 1, 2013)

I would say over kill unless you are cutting down full sheets.  I have cut my PR,plastic, acrylic, Alumilite,and other stuff with a bandsaw, table saw, radial arm saw, and a couple of different hand saws without any issues.  Your true and accurate cuts will depend on a couple of things:

1-How well the saw is set up.  I have a seriously cheap table saw and my cuts totally improved when I got a digital angle gauge  got really Anal about truing up my fences on the the band saw and table saw.  It is amazing how accurate I can cut now that have that little thing.

2-True up your fences and get really anal about your sleds.  A cheap table saw is usable as long as you keep track of these things and make quality accurate sleds.

I have a very cheap table saw and I and pretty happy with what I can with it now that I have figured these things out.  Before that I was way frustrated.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 4, 2013)

Update on my question. I have a good table and miter saw so I got a better blade with more teeth and is good for cutting plastic. The cuts are twice as good as the first ones so major improvement. I also found a reconditioned Skill Sander at a outlet mall tool shop. It cost $80 so I bought it. I also bought some replacement 220 and courser grit pads and put one of the finer ones on the wheel last night. I got it true Square and put some of my round blanks on it and when I looked at what I did I was very happy. The best I have seen yet for me.

I got a private message from a new friend up the road from me near Birmingham who has made some Segmented pens and he made a board with course sand paper glued to it to square his segments before gluing. I then made me a jig with real true Oak wood from Home Depot and can slide the top board over the bottom board with the sand paper. I should be able to get the smaller cuts square this way.

I will have to see how this process is done in person with the Parting Tool as I don't think I am going to have success unless I see how it is done.

Thanks for your help on this project. Maybe when I someday master making these style of pens I can make a video on U Tube for beginners like me so they can see how its done. Thanks again. bob


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## jttheclockman (May 4, 2013)

bobs pens 1 said:


> Update on my question. I have a good table and miter saw so I got a better blade with more teeth and is good for cutting plastic. The cuts are twice as good as the first ones so major improvement. I also found a reconditioned Skill Sander at a outlet mall tool shop. It cost $80 so I bought it. I also bought some replacement 220 and courser grit pads and put one of the finer ones on the wheel last night. I got it true Square and put some of my round blanks on it and when I looked at what I did I was very happy. The best I have seen yet for me.
> 
> I got a private message from a new friend up the road from me near Birmingham who has made some Segmented pens and he made a board with course sand paper glued to it to square his segments before gluing. I then made me a jig with real true Oak wood from Home Depot and can slide the top board over the bottom board with the sand paper. I should be able to get the smaller cuts square this way.
> 
> ...


 

Wow there is alot in here.

First off as mentioned using a parting tool is not the tool to use for segmenting. Can it be used, yes and in fact it is used alot in larger projects such as bowls. Heck I use it all the time in making my birdhouse ornaments. But what has to be remembered is both sides of the now cut piece have to be faced true. How you do this can be accomplished many ways. If left on the lathe you can do it with various tools such as scrapers. gouges or skews. You can also use sandpaper adhered to a flat surface.

Which brings me to my next point. Oak is not the best material to glue sandpaper to. The deep grain pattern can leave ridges in your piece especially if using a fine grit paper where the backing can telegraph through the paper. MDF, acrylic, metal make nice backing material.

To my next point. You have the perfect tools to do segmenting. If you have a decent blade and your tools run true, you can go from cut to glueup and no sanding needed. When sanding small pieces the biggest fear or concern is to sand equally or else the piece is lopsided. This usually takes some sort of jig or luck. 

As far as using a parting tool, there are many utube videos to check out. Good luck.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 5, 2013)

Thank you for your last reply and on oak.

Is there any videos on segmenting pens and cutting the blanks drilling them that you know of?

It sounds like the secret is in the cutting tool such as the table saw, band saw or miter saw. I wonder which of the miter saw or table saw is the best for a beginner. Than I am sure the blade is a issue. What blades would you purchase and put on your table saw or miter saw that would give you a nice clean square cut?

Hope some can tell us your favorites blades to purchase. bob


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## walshjp17 (May 5, 2013)

The YouTube universe has many, many videos on segmenting pens.  Just enter your desired search criteria in a YouTube search box and start wading through the videos.


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## jttheclockman (May 5, 2013)

I hate to do this to you but I have to point you to the search button. Blades have been talked about just recently and many times before. We all have our favorites of what we can AFFORD. Some blades get quite pricy and for what we are doing, overkill. I always loved the Freud line. They have very affordable priced blades of good quality. A nice 60 tooth crosscut blade will serve you well. If you are doing alot of ripping of your own blanks from boards you may want to include a nice rip blade. 

I opt for a tablesaw most of the times. I will go to the bandsaw for the other option. My miter saw sits in the corner and collects dust. That is my put up molding on the move saw. With a tablesaw you can make so many more jigs and I have a shop full of them. Some I forgot what they were for but afraid to throw out for fear I may need it someday. Also your hands and fingers are in plain sight of the blade. As with all power tools you better know how to use them or do not bother. Experimenting with power tools is a bad idea. 

Agreed about Utube. Today there is not one subject that I can think of that someone has not done a video on. Search away and good luck. Just my thoughts.

I should point out once again as I did in my other post, The blade is just the beginning. You can have the best, most expensive blade on a poorly tuned tool and the results won't be pretty.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 6, 2013)

I got a personnel message from a wonderful member of this forum by the name of  Gary   he told me he had heard the Freud is coming out with a new blade this fall and so I typed in to Goggle and found this.

Thought you might like to read about this. Sound like maybe this blade on my miter saw and a gadget that holds down my blank for about $15. will make this set up very safe and the cuts near perfect and that is what I need to reach my goal in segment pens I want to design.
\
I bought a new less expensive blade yesterday a Freud and will see how it works. Maybe in two weeks of fooling around with what I have learned and purchased I will be in the ball park of what I want to accomplish.

Thanks for your tips and advice.
In August at the IWF show in Atlanta, Freud will introduce a 90-tooth saw blade with a new tooth grind that will produce almost glass-smooth crosscuts. I got to see the blade and look it over at the end of a tour of Freud’s carbide production and blade manufacturing facilities in Udine (OO-din-ay) in northeast Italy, where the company was founded. More about the plants in a moment, but first here’s the scoop on the new blade.
Designed for smooth, clean cuts in trimwork and sheetgoods, the blade debuts Freud’s alternate shear face grind. In a nutshell, the top of each tooth is ground at a 30-degree angle, with the angle alternating with each tooth – like the alternating top bevel seen on other blades. What’s really new is that the face of each tooth, as viewed from the top, is ground at a 5-degree angle, with that angle alternating from left to right on successive teeth. With this face grind, the entire width of the tooth doesn’t enter the workpiece at once, but gradually as the blade rotates. This reduces the entry angle into the wood, much like skewing a plane blade provides a smoother cut when a straight-on angle of attack causes tear-out. At 2.5mm thick the mitersaw blade is thinner than standard blades. Freud says the thinner kerf combined with this new grind will help underpowered saws cut more easily. The blade will first roll out for 10” and 12” mitersaws, then for tablesaws. As soon as we can get our hands on some, we’ll let you know our impressions.
Freud produces 16 varieties of carbide in Udine, each with a different balance of cutter hardness and durability. They ship completed teeth to their saw blade manufacturing plant on the other side of the city. Seeing what’s behind the curtain at both plants was pretty amazing. But because Freud doesn’t allow photos inside (ok, I managed to coerce them into one), I’ll just have to describe a bit of what goes on.
The carbide-making process is amazingly technical. (Our tour guide has a PhD. in carbide. Who even knew that was possible?) Powdered cobalt, titanium, and tungsten get blended in vats with alcohol (the light odor of alcohol accents one end of the plant), swirled through a nitrogen-filled cyclone, heated, mixed with paraffin, pressed to shape, and heated again. By manufacturing their own carbide, Freud maintains close control of the quality at every step in the operation. They make between 6,000,000-7,000,000 saw teeth, router-bit edges, and shaper cutters per week here, pressing them to near-finished size, instead of grinding them from larger blanks, which reduces waste. The saw blade teeth make their way across town in plastic bottles about the size of a Sam’s-Club bottle of Rolaids.
At the blade plant, which is shaped like a giant U, raw steel plates come in one end and packaged blades ship out the other. Since Bosch’s purchase of Freud a few years back, German efficiency has improved control and quality checks throughout. According to Technical Plant Manager Stefano Polito, who moved here from an Italian Bosch division, processes that used to take 6-7 weeks, now take 3-4 weeks…and they hope to eventually have it down to one week.
A bar-coded document accompanies every batch of laser-cut blade blanks. Codes are scanned at each step to ensure quality checks are met. Scanning the bar code even identifies which bottle contains the teeth that should be brazed to that batch of blades. A dozen brazing machines run automatically, under the supervision of one operator. Same with the sharpening machines. And one big impression: they make a LOT of saw blades. Thousands upon thousands, from 7¼” circular-saw blades to 32” monsters stacked neatly on spindles, some awaiting balancing, some ready for coating, some in line for packaging. Here’s PART of a stack of chippers for their Super Dado blade:
http://www.woodmagazine.com/blogs/w...05/03/freud-to-unveil-new-90-tooth-saw-blade/


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## jttheclockman (May 6, 2013)

Every body is always trying to up one on the next guy. Freud has a ton of blade designs and tooth configuations. Every blade is design for specific work. The more intricate they make these blades the harder and more expensive it gets to sharpen them. You need specific equipment. Not all blade sharpening people carry the more sofisticated equipment so be aware of this too. These companies keep coming up with new designs so it keeps their name in circulation. Do not want that to die off. 

90 tooth is nothing. 100 tooth is standard in the plywood business

Again I say it with all sincerity, if your tool is not tuned properly you will not see the results they claim. Any runout on the arbor will produce a choppy cut. So many other factors go into tuning each tool. Good luck and i will stick with old reliable. 60 tooth ATB 

By the way and I hope you know this you can not use a tablesaw blade on a chop saw or at least I hope you don't.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 6, 2013)

60 tooth ATB - Yahoo! Image Search Results


Thanks John. If you where going out tomorrow to buy a new blade for your miter saw in this family of blades which ones would you purchase. bob


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## Displaced Canadian (May 6, 2013)

Bob,
I think you may be over thinking the whole thing. It is true about the best thing you can do for a saw is throw the blade that comes with it as far as you can. After that we all have brands we do or don't like. Pretty much any of the bigger names in blades will work well for segmenting. Just avoid blades with paint on the carbide. Almost anything you buy in the $60 or higher will work well and anything over 60 tooth. Some tooth patterns will pull the wood towards the blade so it may be wise to clamp. I use Ridgid blades, they cut smooth and last a long time. If the cut is too smooth you will need to rough it up a bit with sandpaper so the glue will grab better.


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## jttheclockman (May 6, 2013)

bobs pens 1 said:


> 60 tooth ATB - Yahoo! Image Search Results
> 
> 
> Thanks John. If you where going out tomorrow to buy a new blade for your miter saw in this family of blades which ones would you purchase. bob


 

Bob

I agree you are thinking way too much into this blade stuff for what you are doing. If you were doing high integrated segment work for art work such as bowls or other things then the blade choice would be a whole lot different. That goes for both Tablesaw and miter saw.

Anything in the 60 tooth range will give you glue ready joints if it is sharp and clean.

For miter saws you want a negative hook blade especially if you have a sliding miter saw. A standard tablesaw blade with a positive hook will have a tendency to grab the work and run with it. Causing ragged edges. You want a blade that will cut smoothly. Like i said just from your link just look how many different blades there are. Enough to make your head spin. But each blade has a purpose. I would stay away from thin kerf blades on miter saws. Like I said I stay in the Freud line for my everyday average blades. They are reasonable
 and reliable. Do I have other blades, you bet I do and they are expensive. But I do other woodworking than just pen segmenting. 

I can not tell you what blade to buy but i gave you my thoughts.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 6, 2013)

Freud D1060X Diablo Fine Finish Blade

They have this blade at a local store in my town. The owner says if I don't like it he will take it back. He has that much confidence in it.

I think it will do the job just fine. Thanks for your advice on this issue.

This has been a tough one to figure out. Much like buying wine.


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## butchf18a (May 7, 2013)

Perhaps I missed it reading through this entire thread, but Bob what tools do you have. I'm not interested in make, model, etc, just in general. Do you have a table saw, bandsaw, miter saw? I agree with JT, love my Dewalt, 12" compound, sliding miter saw for what it is designed for, and cutting pen blanks isn't one of those functions. My 12" band saw with 1/8" 8 tpi blade sees the bulk of my blank cutting, next is my 10" 3hp table saw equipped with 7 1/4 " 1/16" kerf Freud blade. In all cases I use a cutting sled, (I recently posted two I use). Sleds are easy to make, keep delicate body parts clear of fast moving blades, and substantially improve accuracy. Good blade (does not mean expensive), a cutting sled will allow you to cut consistent, accurate 1/16" segments. Finally, additional concurrence with JT, expensive blade and poorly set up tools will only serve to produce frustrating results.


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## bobs pens 1 (May 9, 2013)

10" 3hp table saw equipped with 7 1/4 " 1/16" kerf Freud blade

I have a good table saw and plan to put on a freud 7 1/2 blade tomorrow. Its a 40 tooth blade.

I also have a sears miter saw.

I have seen some cuts from others who have similar type blades. Some seem to make cuts two to three mm in width.

I have not been back to this thread in a while and missed your reply. Thank you for your comments. I think a good blade is very important but its the guy on the other end that is more important.

bob


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## bobs pens 1 (May 11, 2013)

OnlineToolReviews.com - Wixey Digital Angle Gauge - Detailed Review


Just found this today and think this is a major tool to purchase .


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