I went through all this myself, so while this thread seems to be winding down, here's what I did.
Paid the local mechanic, he did it all by hand, I figured I could do better myself. And I was changing tips a lot. The
little green wheel things are presented as a hand lathe, but I couldn't see how those would work, so I built my own - please don't laugh. It wasn't easy, I had to fix wheel wobbles etc but finally came up with something that works well enough - at least, there is no wobble imparted by the wheels as I'm spinning by hand. There's also a sliding block to which the sandpaper strip is mounted. All along I'm thinking, "I should just buy a damn lathe." And I can mount a drill, yeah, I've done that, but only used that with the rock-hard Samsara break tip (I'll never go through that headache again). And trimming the sides took me forever anyway, and the Willards shaping, damn - hours. You can see how tall I left it.
Ultimately, I did all this to give myself something to do, a hobby. All along I'm asking, "Why the hell don't I just buy a lathe?"
The bottom line is, you can do it fine with a razor and a Willard. And you should. I doubt most would have the patience to go down the road I did. I am particular and wanted a pretty result, but pretty makes no difference in play. Trying different cues, selling here, I wanted to present well in pics - I wasn't about to sell a cue here with some hack-looking tip. But that's just me.
Oh, get yourself a
Tweeten sander, they're cheap. I suppose a not-perfectly-flat ferrule end would still work OK (esp. with Gel-type CA glue), but I've never tried it.
Good luck.
