CA finish chat.....part 2

[Rick P]

When I posted a pic of my first CA finish pen I had several questions including how to keep the bushings from sticking to the barrel. I am really glad I found this site! I got a ton of great advice but it got me thinking. I promised to update the forum if my idea worked well and boy did it! No stickiness between the barrel and my jigs at all! So here is what I did, I turned two matching conical pieces of hardwood on the mandrel down to the 7mm brass tube in the center of them. By having a rather shallow angle I am able to fit any size tube and the jigs do not make contact with the barrel ends. Here are some pics makes a ton more sence than this dyslexic can type out.

 

[Rick P]

I am sure this has been done before and I am just reinventing the wheel but I thought it was cool. I sanded the finish down as fine as I had on hand but it still had a few surface marks as you can see in the pic of just the barrel........that got me thinking again. My dad had a simple folk way of doing damn near anything and he had said once that you can buff things with a wool sock. I gave it a try and I am sure a bit of plastic polish would have worked better but the surface marks are gone.......took some time but it worked.
The blank was from a stump that I dragged out of a neighbors yard.......she looked at me like I might be far enough off to be a safety concern when I asked for it. I stabilized it myself and got about 30 blanks out of the stump. You have to be careful with it and sand the last 1/16-1/8th of material but it turns.

 

[BSea]

I think you found a good solution. One other thing you can do is to do a center piece so you can have both blanks on at the same time. If you look at JohnnyCNC's site, he has what he calls the eliminator bushings. The idea you have is similar to what he is doing.

Here's a link to his eliminator bushings.

Nice looking pen too.:good:

 

[Rick P]

Actually he might have posted about them on my first thread??????? I guess I didn't get what he was talking about.

I knew you guys were smarter than this ole backwoods boy! :wink:

 

[BSea]

I actually posted about using his delrin between center bushings in your earlier thread. If someone mentioned the eliminator bushings, I didn't see that.

 

[Rick P]

OH well thanks again Bob! Sorry I didnt catch it the first time.

 

[BSea]

OH well thanks again Bob! Sorry I didnt catch it the first time.

You didn't miss anything. I did post about the delrin bushings, but not the eliminator setup which you basically came up with on your own. The only thing the eliminator has over your setup is the double conical center bushing so you can finish both blanks at the same time. If I had a mandrel, I'd probably copy what you've done.