Bree
Member
I was over at Rockler Friday and they didn't have anything new. I needed to make a pen for a friend's birthday on Monday and wanted something exciting. So I started to haggle over some old burls they had. The really good ones were sold long ago. But I figured that there were still a lot of good pens in some of those Aussie burls.
Anyhoo... I managed to get 50% off AND got them to trim down the poundage since much of the burl would go to waste as there was a lot of cap. That reduced my effective cost to 60-75% off on some of them. I bought some Brown Malle, some Eucalyptus Resin, some Tasmanian Myrtle, and some Amboyna. I milled two of the Brown Mallee burls and picked a nice piece to do a fast Sierra.
The turning went well. The CA/Tung Oil finishing went much slower!! I am not real good at this CA finishing and it took a lot longer than I had planned. I tried using that plastic wrap they use for shipping that will not absorb CA for the spreading. It definitely spreads the CA but I had to do a lot of sanding and polishing.
The biggest problems I had were that first the CA extended past the blank and onto the bushing. When I pulled the bushing off (waxing beforehand helped mucho!) the CA extended like a sleeve past the blank's end. Second... the darn tube popped when I was press fitting the pen end and I had to recement it in.
I had to wrap the pen with the plastic (to avoid getting CA on the finished blank surface) and smoosh the CA around inside to make sure it coated the tube and then get the tube exactly aligned with the end before the CA setup. As it turned out I had to sand a tiny bit of the tube away to get the blank and pen body to align right. The pen was saved.
The birthday girl loved her pen and slipped it down her cleavage top protect it from all the bikers who wanted top take a look at it! We were on a motorcycle ride when I gave it to her this morning. So here is the Brown Mallee Burl Sierra with CA/Tung Oil finish.
One of these days I'm going to figure out how to do this stuff right the first time!!
:redface::redface::redface:
Anyhoo... I managed to get 50% off AND got them to trim down the poundage since much of the burl would go to waste as there was a lot of cap. That reduced my effective cost to 60-75% off on some of them. I bought some Brown Malle, some Eucalyptus Resin, some Tasmanian Myrtle, and some Amboyna. I milled two of the Brown Mallee burls and picked a nice piece to do a fast Sierra.
The turning went well. The CA/Tung Oil finishing went much slower!! I am not real good at this CA finishing and it took a lot longer than I had planned. I tried using that plastic wrap they use for shipping that will not absorb CA for the spreading. It definitely spreads the CA but I had to do a lot of sanding and polishing.
The biggest problems I had were that first the CA extended past the blank and onto the bushing. When I pulled the bushing off (waxing beforehand helped mucho!) the CA extended like a sleeve past the blank's end. Second... the darn tube popped when I was press fitting the pen end and I had to recement it in.
I had to wrap the pen with the plastic (to avoid getting CA on the finished blank surface) and smoosh the CA around inside to make sure it coated the tube and then get the tube exactly aligned with the end before the CA setup. As it turned out I had to sand a tiny bit of the tube away to get the blank and pen body to align right. The pen was saved.
The birthday girl loved her pen and slipped it down her cleavage top protect it from all the bikers who wanted top take a look at it! We were on a motorcycle ride when I gave it to her this morning. So here is the Brown Mallee Burl Sierra with CA/Tung Oil finish.
One of these days I'm going to figure out how to do this stuff right the first time!!
:redface::redface::redface:
