Another learning experience

[monophoto]

I'm working on a set of pens for family members as Christmas gifts. I had in mind to make a Cigar-style ballpoint for one of our sons, using african blackwood with maple inlays.

The wood turned beautifully, but the end product was very disappointing.

The process I have evolved to finish pens is to sand through the grits starting at 150, wiping down the pen with a dry paper towel between grits to remove dust. I got all the way to 800, and then polished the wood with kraft paper - it looked very nice.

The final step was to wipe the pen down with a paper towel soaked in denatured alcohol. That was a mistake! The DNA picked up the oil from the blackwood, and then soaked into the maple. The result is very ugly.

Fortunately, I have some spare tubes, so I am starting over with a different blank (olivewood) and no fancy inlays. But I definitely learned a lesson. My experiences using walnut inlays in maple have been very successful, but every time I've tried to put a maple inlay in an exotic wood, the maple has been stained excessively by oils from the exotic..

We learn something everyday!

 

[ToddMR]

Finish it with CA would be my suggestion. Sounds like how ebony is too. Man that stuff gets EVERYWHERE! Hope you get it all worked out. Would love to see a picture of a finished pen.

 

[mick]

The only way to be 100% successful using something like Blackwood and Maple is to not sand at all. You have to finish as smooth as possible with something like a skew and forgo the sanding. Go straight to thin CA as a sealer. Even then depending how oily the Blackwood is you might still get some slight staining if you rub too vigorously applying the first coat of CA.

 

[fernhills]

Hi i know what you mean. Like what was suggested, is not to sand. You have to get to the final profile with your tools, 150 sand paper, not being one of them. You might want to try when mixing light and dark colors with wood is Acrylics. The Acrylic lamination in most cases will not absorb the darker color dust. There are lots of solid color plastics out there. Hope this helps.

 

[OLDMAN5050]

Also I have found that if you soak the thin inlay with ca and sand smooth before putting the inlay into the blank it will not mix the dust into the blank or the blank dust/oil into the inlay. have done a couple like that and had good results.

 

[sbwertz]

The final step was to wipe the pen down with a paper towel soaked in denatured alcohol. That was a mistake! The DNA picked up the oil from the blackwood, and then soaked into the maple. The result is very ugly.

I use an ordinary tack cloth from the hardware store for segmented pens. Does a good job of picking the sawdust out of the grain without transferring it to the light wood.

Sharon