Stylus

[clovishound]

Clovispup wants me to make her a stylus for her tablet. She doesn't seem to care for the pen kit ones I showed her. The keychain style are smaller than she wants. I'm thinking about buying a bag of the stylus tips and turning a stylus to suit her hand and then drilling the end and gluing it in place with epoxy. After looking at the tips available, I am leaning towards the two piece that have a threaded insert that is glued in the body, and a tip that screws into it. The other option is the soft bodied slimline style kit by Woodriver. I could use the tip and the soft body for comfort, and then not bother with the other end that presses on and has the clip. Just turn the body full sized and use the tip end hardware.

The completed kits look like this.


Woodcraft

Anybody done any of these?
 
Pitfalls?

Suggestions?

[arthropod98]

just a different style to check out:

https://www.pennstateind.com/store/PKDSTYCH.html

who knew there were so many tips??

[hoss 727]

I have made some stylus using long 7mm tubes from Penn State ind. I read somewhere i think on the International butt. of Pen Turners site that the tip wont work without the tube. I don't remember why.

[AHill]

Stylus tips need to have some conductivity, hence the connection to something metal or conductive.  Most cell phone and tablet touch screens these days are capacitive screens.  Resistive screens just require pressure but are cheaper to make.  It's easier to make a stylus work with capacitive screens, since it'll work with resistive screens also vs. the other way around.

[clovishound]

Well, I ordered a couple of the softgrip kits and a couple of just the tips with the threaded insert. I believe the reason the tips won't work without the tube is that you need to secure the threaded insert into the wood and then screw the tip into it. I suppose you could drill the wood the right diameter and epoxy just the insert, but using a tube and then pressing the insert into the tube would be my preferred method.

Anyway, I completed one stylus today using just the tip and insert. I turned a blank into something like a pen then drilled the end and pressed a section of 7mm tube into it. I didn't glue it as planned, because I misplaced my 7mm bit, and drilled the closest diameter I had with a fractional bit. I was checking for fit and got the tube stuck. I went ahead and pressed it all the way in, and decided it was good enough for a test bed. I can retrieve the insert later if it fails anyway.

Couple things I learned. Predrilling the hole for the insert is problematic. If you turn the drilled end to near finished diameter, the end at the tailstock will split when you get to the middle and things start flexing. I thought gluing in the tube would fix this. It didn't.

The other thing I learned was that drilling after turning works. It can, however, introduce a little off center to the bore. I was able to resinstall on the lathe and turn/sand it concentric. Good thing I left things a little generous on diameter. Not entirely happy with the end result, but not too bad for the first off of something more or less from scratch.

Sorry, no time to take and post pictures. I have to go to work shortly.

I'll get Clovispup to give it a test drive tonight and see what she thinks of the shape, balance and look.