I just received an adjustable pen mandrel a couple of days ago. I put it on the lathe without a blank to see how it worked and noticed a little wobble. I thought perhaps I had the tail stock adjusted too tightly, but it was barely touching. I backed the tail stock off; still wobbled. Tightened it up a little, still wobbled. I re-set the mandrel in the lathe and cleaned all the parts to ensure that there was no dust in any of the fittings. Still wobbled. Next I pulled out a dial indicator on a magnetic base and measured 0.006" of runout. It was nearly perfect at the headstock end, and down to 0.002" at the far end. It appears that the worst runout is near the middle of the rod.
The questions are; will this effect the final alignment of my tuned pen blanks to the metal pen fittings (I assume yes), and have any of you had a similar problem? Am I better off sending it back for a replacement?
Thanks,
Jon