SO CLOSE!!!

[Drstrangefart]

I know, my browser and the online pic resizer were arguing today. But, this is bloodwood with construction paper veneering work. I had it through both barrels and it looked AMAZING. The paper naturally split during nib press-in, and I tried VERY hard to salvage it, as I was looking for a PITH pen out of it. I lost the lower barrel entirely and had to scrub it. This meant re-loading the mandrel, which seemed to be wobbling, causing an OOR issue. I went ahead and finished it off and made a killer blue&white PR centerband. Sadly, the outside of the transmission was too large, causing the centerband to split upon installation and making it impossible to press the top barrel on. Had to fix that, and made the new centerband out of dyed box elder.

 

[toyotaman]

Looks good to me. You said you used paper in the barrel. I've not tried this before so if I can ask what kind of paper?? Are you talking about the blue part?

 

[workinforwood]

Sounds like you had one of those days! Pen turned out real nice though.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Looks good to me. You said you used paper in the barrel. I've not tried this before so if I can ask what kind of paper?? Are you talking about the blue part?

The blue and white inlays are 3 layers of standard construction paper.

That's another inlay I did, and I was looking for that kind of patterning in the pen, but the bottom barrel failed and had to be scrapped. You can attempt it, you'll need COMPLETE saturation with thick or meduim CA to make it all work.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Sounds like you had one of those days! Pen turned out real nice though.

Thanks! It kills me knowing there's an out of round isaue and I can never un-know it. I love bloodwood, but it hates me with a passion apparently.

 

[rsulli16]

Hi
can you elaborate more on construction paper? the only time i see paper glued in like that is to make a take-apart joint for later, like in segmenting.
Thanks
Sulli

 

[boxerman]

Sorry to hear about your trouble. Still a very nice pen.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Hi
can you elaborate more on construction paper? the only time i see paper glued in like that is to make a take-apart joint for later, like in segmenting.
Thanks
Sulli

The goal here is saturating the paper as thoroughly as possible with glue. Basically the paper becomes a bonding agent for the glue. Doesn't matter how you do it, as long as the paper is thoroughly soaked. I've had limited success as there's always a split that shoes up during press fitting. What I did was made the cut, took one side of the blank, coated the cut with thick CA, laid down some paper, a new layer of thick CA, new layer of paper, new layer of thick CA, new layer of paper, new layer of thick CA, and put the other half of the blank back on and clamped it as hard as humanly possible to make the seam tight and force glue deeper into the paper. With thick CA, the paper acts more like stabilized wood than it does with wood glue, and the wood glue has catastrophically failed, possibly due to not drying enough.

 

[rizaydog]

I think it's great too. Fine work.