Russknan
Member
A few days ago, I spent some time in the Penturning forum moaning about how I had made a pen for a boy who is about to have his Eagle Scout award conferred. He is a former patient of mine whom I've liked a lot over time, and I am going to be invited to the ceremony. I worked through two techniques new to me - decals and staining - and, with some necessary "adjustments", pulled it off to my considerable satisfaction. So I took it outside, put it on a piece of foam core on top of my barbecue grill to photograph. Turned around for a minute, and a gust of wind lifted the foam core and pen, and sent the pen sailing into the handrail of my deck, landing it with a couple of bumps onto the concrete pad below. Both blanks were considerably dinged but, fortunately, none of the dings were into the decal area. Folks were very sympathetic and helpful in suggesting fixes. The hardware was damaged, but I had one remaining duplicate kit. Whew! I won't post the damage pictures again, just what resulted. I used CA to carefully "dot" each ding. Then, after the CA dried, took a skew and, as gently as I could, brought the surface back to level. Worked fine on the upper blank with the decal, which was the one that concerned me the most. However, I got down a little too far on the bottom blank which was colored red. I turned a new lower blank, just in case and, in the mean time, decided I had nothing to lose in applying the watercolor paint on top of both the bare wood and the remaining CA. Gave it two coats then, when dry, buffed with a piece of a paper bag, put on a coat of BLO and about 12 of my usual BLO/CA. Buffed with Tripoli and White Diamond, and assembled. My photos make it look like there is a big flaw above the Eagle badge and just above the nib. But, even looking under a magnifying glass, they're not really there. I'm just relieved, since the ceremony could be at any time. (I'm expecting last minute notice.) Anyway, thanks again, all who helped. Please feel free to leave comments of any kind or suggestions. Russ
