Experimenting with a new coating
Like most pen makers, I’ve been giving my pens a gloss finish with CA glue. It’s quick, (relatively) easy and gives a nice, shiny result.
However, there are more traditional and ultimately harder coatings to finish with – so this week I’ve bought some Shellac Varnish to experiment with.
It’s a lot more time consuming and a great deal slower – and so far I’ve had mixed results – one blank has come out really nicely. The other came out ok, but when giving it a final sanding/polish I went too coarse and sanded it straight off with the design that was underneath. (More on that below).
I think there’s a bit more research and practice needed!
The special pen project
I’m still working on the special pen… the pen body section is now complete and polished, the cap is still being a bit of a pain. Sat and spent time hand-sawing the blank to make sure the lines were spot on, drilled a pilot hole which went well, drilled the final hole…. which at 13mm was quite close to the blank size. Went about 1mm off line, but still ok….. came to put the tube in and the damn thing stuck halfway down. Had to cut it and put it back in from the other side.
Popped it on the lathe, and it blew apart – the glue that held it in place when it stuck wasn’t enough to hold it together. Managed to re-glue it down ok, but some of the colour line had been damaged and it didn’t look right – plus a 3mm section of the main line had broken out at the end.
So, another failure and I had the joy of having to lathe it off to regain the tube for the next attempt…
Remembrance day pen
Something I’m trying at the moment is waterslide images onto wooden pens. It’s more work – you have to finish the pen as normal, apply the transfer, then add more coats of gloss finish…. this is the pen I was talking about in the first section. All went well until I went overboard on the sanding and took the image back off too.
Back to the start….
