Cleaning up pins

[Don Nguyen]

I have trouble with pins.

-How do you approach grinding down pins without heating them too much?
-When sanding, they load up the paper and then stain the wood around them almost - how do you deal with this?
-For the holes drilled, how much larger should they be than the actual pins? 0.003 or something like that?

Any miscellaneous tips with pins? I've gotten around the problems listed above, but it's tricky. I can sure improve my ways

Thanks. Sincerely,

-Don

 

[Remyrw]

grind down close with a fresh coarse belt in stages. grind a little, let it cool. Depending on the material you can dunk the handle. A damp rag.... Letting it air cool for a bit... The fresh belt keeps the temps down. During final shaping I just go slow, keep it cool, don't use old belts. That bit of discoloring is helped by reversing directions occasionally. If you're grinding with the spine up, flip so it's edge up....

 

[Tom Lewis]

For the holes, a #30 drill will work for a 1/8" pin, and a letter F drill will work for a 1/4" pin.
Like Remyrw said, use sharp belts. I do most of the shaping with a sharp 36 grit belt. I shape at least four handles at the same time. The reason for this is if I just work on one, I get impatient and get the pins too hot. With four handles, I rotate and that gives the pins on the first handle time to cool off by the time I work on the fourth handle. What I mean is, when the pins on the first handle start to get hot, I put it down and start on the second handle.

 

[MJV]

Just go slow on the grinding with a fresh belt like has been said. Don't overheat them. Then I do clean them up with needle files to remove the burrs (to get a little taper on the top) before I peen them.