Check out these cool circuit board pens
I love how these circuit board pens turned out. I’ve sold quite a few and they seem to be a favorite with engineers and techies. I made a tutorial for a wooden pen very similar to the circuit board pens. You can see my tutorial–How to Make a Wooden Pen–on Snapguide. And you can checkout my circuit board pen tutorial on YouTube:
I normally stick to turning wooden blanks, but I had no problems with these acrylic blanks I purchased from Woodcraft.
The blanks come already glued to a pen tube. Before I slipped the blank on my 7mm pen mandrel, all I had to do was square up the ends, using my disc sander. Make sure you have the right size bushings.
Acrylic can be fairly challenging to turn, but not impossible. Just keep your tools sharp and use a very light touch. These pens come in a variety of colors: black, white, green, orange, and blue. The pens with the blue circuit boards are my favorite.
Pictured below are the special sanding pads I used to finish the acrylic blanks. These can be purchased from Penn State Industries.
I polished the acrylic pens with a product made by HUT called Ultra Gloss Plastic Polish. This product is also made available at the Woodcraft.
More pics of circuit board pens
