HDPE Recycled Pen and Pencil Set

Started with Milk and Juice jugs and Pop bottle caps to finished pens!

Supplies

Things you need:

some Recycled #2 plastic, I used milk and juice jugs for the white and pop bottle caps for the black
a mold - I made from scrap melamine that I got when I broke down a white cabinet.
toaster oven - I used an old oven I had in the shop
heat resistant gloves - these are silicone BBQ cloves. Bought off of amazon a few years back for $5
pan for baking the plastic - I used a glass casserole dish that I got from the dollar store, $4
Lathe
pen mandrel kit - can be done without this, but a lot harder
correct size bushings and drill bits and a barrel trimmer
pen/pencil kit
epoxy/CA glue
various lathe tools
sandpaper
drill press
vise

Recycled Pen and Pencil Set!

I am going to go through how I made a Turned Pen and Pencil from a bunch of milk jugs. juice jugs and pop bottle caps. Most of this instructable will be a series of videos, I did not edit the videos to keep them in real time.

How Much Plastic Will I Need?

So I am making a mold that is about 4 x 4 x 36 cm, and I needed to figure out how much plastic will be needed. I googled the density of HDPE and found a few different numbers but all very close to one another. About 1 gram per cubic cm. To me this seemed rather low, so I decided to make my own little cube. I melted down 1 - 2L milk jug, and tried to form a bit of a cube. Turned out it weighed about 40 grams. The size is about 4.5 x 3.25 x 2.75 cm, so about 40.21875 cubic cm, so pretty close to density of 1 gram to 1 cubic cm.

My mold is about 576 cubic cm, and I want a little extra because there will be some shrinkage, so I decide to try for 600 cubic cm, OR about 15 milk jugs. I am going to add a little color into the mix, black pop bottle caps, this will give the impression of marble, hopefully!!