Experimental Stars and Stripes pens

[CycleTurner]

As Forth of July is quickly approaching, I experimented on a few Stars and Stripes pens. Not all of them came out well, but they help me learn a few things along the way.

From left to right:

A reverse Longwood modification of a Slimline.
Center band is made with red, white, and blue plastic plates.
The red stripes are inlay with red 3D paint. Tried to add wiggles to the stripes.
The blue top is painted with acrylic paint.
Stars are nail art glitter.
The finish is a brush on Minwax Polycrylic clear gloss.
Wood is Cottonwood.

Everything same except,
The red stripes is painted with acrylic paint - straight stripes.
Stars are nail art rhinestones.
Wood is White Ash.

The next two cigars are the same except the left one is Cottonwood and the right one is Maple.
The red stripes is painted with acrylic paint - straight stripes.
The blue top is painted with acrylic paint.
Stars are inlay with white acrylic paint.
The finish is a brush on Minwax Polycrylic Clear gloss.

The cigar on the far right is Maple.
The red stripes is painted with acrylic paint - wiggled stripes.
The blue top is painted with acrylic paint.
Stars are painted with white acrylic paint.
The finish is a brush on Minwax Polycrylic clear gloss.

What I've learned doing these experiments:
Cottonwood is very white in color but it doesn't paint as well as Maple.
White Ash is not white enough.
Cutting inlay into the wood is very hard to do and painting is much easier.
Minwax Polycrylic has a rubber feel to it.
Using things like nail art glitter or rhinestones makes the pen almost unusable due to fear of knocking off the starts.
Using Scotch tape and cutting out the shapes to be painted makes the edges much cleaner.

From these experiments, I'm hoping I can make my next Starts and Stripes pen much better.

-CT

 

[angboy]

Very nice! I can't imagine making something like this. A question, how did you get the shape of the stars in the ones where the stars are painted?

 

[rhahnfl]

Very labor intensive but the cigar on the right is striking!! My favorite among them. You should be proud... and thanks for passing along what you learned. We all benefit that way!!!

 

[splinter99]

very nice..I too would like to know how you painted the stars

 

[sfines]

You might want to try Orange instead of white ash (not OO, actual orange) when it dries out it's very very pale, almost exactly white - to the point that I call it ghost orange when I work with it.

 

[NavyDiver]

Nice work. They get better as you move to the right.

 

[csb333]

You are one heck of a painter!! I would have gone nuts after about five stars. - Chris PS- The far right is my favorite

 

[Ligget]

The far right cigar is my favourite too, the red a white stripes look better in the "wavy" form![]

 

[neon007]

Beautiful work! Excellent paint work as well. Keep it coming.

 

[CycleTurner]

Thanks for the kind words. One correction, the pen on the right is Cottonwood, not Maple.

To make the stars, I used some simple math to determine the size of the stars I need. I then created two computer printed out templates that I made with my drawing program.

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I first prep the blank by painting the blue color in, since I can't really paint it after I put in the stars. After the paint dries (several coats were needed), I put scotch tape all around the blank to protect the blue paint.

I use the pentagon with the lines template to mark the blank into five equal parts. I then cut the star pattern template along the lines (indicated below) and glue the strips of stars on to the tape, making sure the stars line up with the marks I made.

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I use a X-acto knife to cut out the stars. I paint several coats of paint on the cut out stars, checking to make sure I removed the cut out pattern of the tape or I would be painting on the tape instead of the blank. I then use a second star pattern template and cut along the second lines (indicated below) and glue the them between the first set of stars. I repeat the process of cutting, and painting.

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When all the stars are painted in and dry, I lightly sand stars to remove the unevenness of the paint. Then I peel off the paper strips and remove the tape. Taking off the tape is the tedious part. Because of the star pattern cuts, the tape does not come off in big pieces. Instead, I had to use the tip of an X-acto knife and tweezers to remove all the little pieces of tape.

After removing all the tape, there is going to be some left over glue. Use fresh tape to remove the glue between the stars.

The finish is the last step. I used a brush on finish instead of applying the finish on the lathe. I was concern that the stars or the blue paint would get destroyed, much like inlay stars in the other two cigar pens.

That is pretty much what I did. It was a lot of work and some of the stars did not come out as well as I liked, but now that I've done the experiments, I hope to be able to do better on my next one.

The patterns here will work with cigar pens and perhaps other kits as well. Good luck and happy turning,

-CT

 

[thewishman]

WOW!! I was impressed by the picture, I am even more impressed when I read the process you used! Very nice work!

Chris

 

[fstepanski]

Impressive work on all CT. Appreciate sharing your growth / learning curve. Great way for all to build. The innovative solution to create the stars on the Cigar pen, very cool. The other required chunk of math I see is calculating circumference / width of star template then generating appropriate distribution.

Happt turnin'
Frank

 

[Stevej72]

Wow! Great job! All that small detail work is very impressive. Thanks for sharing.

 

[skiprat]

Superb!!! Great thinking, great workmanship and great info.[]