7pc Universal Barrel Trimming System: Steel Cutter

Barrel Trimmer works.

By creating an end surface guaranteed to be perpendicular to the bored axis, this tool is essential for pen turning. It's hard to imagine how else you could achieve the same accuracy. Perfect.

Good tool for the money...

I do about half of my pens in Corian and other solid surface materials. The cutter head seems to get pretty dull after just a few pens out of solid surface materials. In retrospect, I should have bought the carbide tipped version for the plastic pens. Maybe I'll do that so that I can keep this steel cutter just for wood, probably would be better and stay sharper that way. That being said - it is a great tool to assure the proper fit of the finished pen. I had used a belt sander in the past and wasn't always satisfied with the final fit of wood to pen parts. This tool has completely solved that particular problem for me.

DEFINATLY NOT WORTH THE PRICE

I'm very disappointed in the one I got. It looked like it was used and had been laying in the parking lot getting run over for a month. It was duller than a butter knife and just wanted to split and blow out the blocks when I tried to use it. I had to sit and use a Diamond Whetstone on it for an hour to get it sharp enough to use. After working it over several times with a Diamond Whetstone I finally got it to cut like its supposed to and should have been in the first place. Then I found out the steel its made out of isn't good tool steel. It wont keep its edge and needs to be resharpened after trimming only 4 or 5 blocks. Unless they are really hard wood then its only good for a couple of blocks. DO NOT BUY THIS unless you are good at sharpening tools.

A must have item

Don't waste time trying to get by with just sanding the ends of your blanks like I did. You can get a much faster, cleaner end that is absolutely square with this set!

great little kit

I've used this for both 7mm and 10mm pen sets and it works extremely well. I recommend getting this instead of just the 7mm set as you can use it for several sizes and the price is very fair.