budnder
Member
Trying my hand at affixing a stamp to a wooden blank. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with it. It looks a little better in person, than in the pictures... I think because it's an old stamp, you forgive a little fray in person, but in the photo it jumps out at you. Funny how some pens are that way and others seem to look better in the photo than in real life.
Trials and travails -
33/64 and 31/64 are big honkin' holes. I turn to round between centers first, then hold in a collet and drill on the lathe. I rarely have any blowout issues as the collet holds the back end real tight. The cap blank was uneventful, but on the longer body blank, the hole on the front end got a bit oversized. I made sure I had epoxy filling any little gap, but there's not much meat on the ends of the body and it still chipped out a bit on me when I turned it. It repaired with a sawdust/epoxy mix very well - it just looks like a normal variation in the wood.
I used flat modge podge to glue the stamp to the cap, let it dry overnight, then "overcoated" then entire cap with flat modge podge to seal it. Again, dry overnight. While my intent was to have a flat profile on the wood, I had just a wee bit of pucker on the stamp where I think the center of the cap was a greater diameter than the ends. If I had to do it again, I'd have taken the calipers to the wood to make sure it was dead on flat all the way across. This wood is old oak firewood, and is a little brittle to begin with, so I really didn't want to overturn it too thin to allow for the CA build-up on the stamp.
The CA went on the stamp and cap blank without incident. A couple of coats of thin to start with, then 7 or 8 coats of medium. I then sanded it smooth (400 then 600) - a bit nerve racking because obviously if I don't have it thick enough over the stamp, then it's game over. Went through all the micro mesh grits wet up to 12000, then Novus #2 and Novus #1. Finish looked good.
Now, I put it back on the bushings and very carefully turned off the CA on last 1/8" of each end, down to the bushings. Then had to go through my finishing steps again to finish the ends... I should have turned it off before I did the first finishing steps. Doh.
Assembly was uneventful, other than trying to figure out where the clip looked best, vis-a-vis the stamp. Easy to adjust, since it's just friction fit with a screw. I put a Pilot G2 Gel refill in it and that fit fine.
This is my first Churchill. It's a heavy pen (48+ grams). It has a quality feel - better than I thought it would. I was thinking alot of the "black" components were plastic, but they're metal. It posts rather nicely, but is way to heavy for my tastes to write that way.
Trials and travails -
33/64 and 31/64 are big honkin' holes. I turn to round between centers first, then hold in a collet and drill on the lathe. I rarely have any blowout issues as the collet holds the back end real tight. The cap blank was uneventful, but on the longer body blank, the hole on the front end got a bit oversized. I made sure I had epoxy filling any little gap, but there's not much meat on the ends of the body and it still chipped out a bit on me when I turned it. It repaired with a sawdust/epoxy mix very well - it just looks like a normal variation in the wood.
I used flat modge podge to glue the stamp to the cap, let it dry overnight, then "overcoated" then entire cap with flat modge podge to seal it. Again, dry overnight. While my intent was to have a flat profile on the wood, I had just a wee bit of pucker on the stamp where I think the center of the cap was a greater diameter than the ends. If I had to do it again, I'd have taken the calipers to the wood to make sure it was dead on flat all the way across. This wood is old oak firewood, and is a little brittle to begin with, so I really didn't want to overturn it too thin to allow for the CA build-up on the stamp.
The CA went on the stamp and cap blank without incident. A couple of coats of thin to start with, then 7 or 8 coats of medium. I then sanded it smooth (400 then 600) - a bit nerve racking because obviously if I don't have it thick enough over the stamp, then it's game over. Went through all the micro mesh grits wet up to 12000, then Novus #2 and Novus #1. Finish looked good.
Now, I put it back on the bushings and very carefully turned off the CA on last 1/8" of each end, down to the bushings. Then had to go through my finishing steps again to finish the ends... I should have turned it off before I did the first finishing steps. Doh.
Assembly was uneventful, other than trying to figure out where the clip looked best, vis-a-vis the stamp. Easy to adjust, since it's just friction fit with a screw. I put a Pilot G2 Gel refill in it and that fit fine.
This is my first Churchill. It's a heavy pen (48+ grams). It has a quality feel - better than I thought it would. I was thinking alot of the "black" components were plastic, but they're metal. It posts rather nicely, but is way to heavy for my tastes to write that way.
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