My first themed pen....in progress

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Jayman72

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Hey all.

I thought you might like to see this.

It's the cap for my first themed pen.

A good friend of mine is a HUGE Wonder Woman fan so I jokingly told her I could make her a WW pen if she wanted. Well I did not plan on her actually taking me up on it. That was a mistake. Because before I could figure out the logistics of it she said I HAD to make it for her.

Well here is the cap. Turned out pretty nice.

Red and Yellow acrylic with black veneer.

Base is going to be the Blue acrylic with the white stars. Had a catastrophic failure on it this morning so I am having to do it again tomorrow.

Anyway, hope you like it.

Jay
Tampa, FL


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Jayman72

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Looks great so far. Are you using one of those "blue with white stars" acrylic blanks for the lower part?

Yeah. Thankfully the piece is big enough to get another base out of it considering the failure I had this morning.
 

Jayman72

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The finished product

OK folks here it is.....

Did not turn out too bad. a bit of an issue with the reverse painting not letting the CA adhere to the blank correctly. (The tube actually came out after I had completed turning and sanding it to shape. I had to glue up the tube again and in the process removed the paint from the tube because I did not want it to come undone again.)

Hope you like it.
Jay
Tampa, FL


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jttheclockman

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Have a question. I have this material (blue with stars) but have yet to use it. Plan on quite a few pens in the future with it. I notice on the nib end of the pen the blue looks thin and washed out. Is it because the blue is translucent and you used white paint to compensate for the stars?? Do you need to be concerned with the white stars and the tube showing thru them??? Could you just backpaint the blank with blue??? Thanks.
 

Skie_M

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Actually, he ended up removing the paint from inside the tube so that his glue would have better adhesion ... I can see the brass tube through the blue.

It might be a good idea to paint the actual brass tube blue to prevent that effect, but the comment was made that the white stars are sometimes translucent ... if that were the case, then the blue barrel would tint the stars blue towards the nib.
 

J Michael

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Might be that there is more than one source making the blue/white stars blanks, or they might change their formula from time to time, but my experience with the ones that I got from PSI was that the blue was the translucent part and the stars were opaque. Depending on the color you want you can back paint the tubes white, gray, a shade of blue or black.
 

jttheclockman

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Actually, he ended up removing the paint from inside the tube so that his glue would have better adhesion ... I can see the brass tube through the blue.

It might be a good idea to paint the actual brass tube blue to prevent that effect, but the comment was made that the white stars are sometimes translucent ... if that were the case, then the blue barrel would tint the stars blue towards the nib.

Hence the question:):):)

Might be that there is more than one source making the blue/white stars blanks, or they might change their formula from time to time, but my experience with the ones that I got from PSI was that the blue was the translucent part and the stars were opaque. Depending on the color you want you can back paint the tubes white, gray, a shade of blue or black.


I understand what I could do as far as painting goes but again my question is if i paint the blank blue will it have a negative effect on the stars??


Ed from Exotics

Will you care to weigh in here. It is your blanks that I have. Do you have any info you can share on this topic??? I know I can turn one for myself and check it out but it maybe still some time before I can do this.
 

Jayman72

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Tampa, FL
To answer a few questions..

I originally painted the tube a dark blue. I figured the blue would work better than black knowing that the blue was translucent when turned down. The issue I ran into was that the CA glue did not adhere to the tube as I think the layer of paint pushed all/most of the CA got pushed out. So once I turned it down and removed the bushings, the tube slid out as well. So I removed the paint from the tube and re glued it. This time it held.

Yes the tube is showing through at the bottom and I was a tad disappointed. But the few people who have all seen have said they really like the way I made the blue fade toward the bottom. (My secret now I guess.) ;)

If I make another one I'm actually considering using a white tube since so many people have commented how much they like the way it fades.

Thanks for the look and the comments everyone.

Jay
Tampa, FL
 
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