Cracks

[cdat]

I'm in the process of turning a stabilized maple burl blank. Three quartes of the way thru, several small cracks appeared. I have tried to use CA to stabilize them. Although the cracks seem to be filled, they still show. Is there anyway to make them disapear? Its such a nice blank, I would really hate to lose it.
Thanks for any advice[B)]

 

[Mac In Oak Ridge]

If the blank is stablized wood, the cracks are likely normal defects that you will find in any burl. The stabilziing process filled the cracks with acrylic. No need to attempt to fill them again. That is what the stablizing is for.

If they cracks are new, after stablizing then you need to fill them with CA glue. Just run your fingernail over them and you should be able to tell the difference.

 

[gerryr]

Some people actually enlarge those "defects" and fill them with crushed stone and CA.

 

[leatherjunkie]

when i notice a crack or a knot that has popped out, i use the shavings from the blank under the lathe. just stuff the shavings into the crack with lots of ca glue. stuff enough in the crack to overfill it. then just sand it level.

"WARNING" when doing this method make sure you have cleaned up the wood shavings from other pen blanks before turning new blanks.
i fixed buckeye burl one time using this method without cleaning up under the lathe. i ended up putting a mixture of bloodwood, boxelder and buckeye burl into the cracks[][]. it wasnt a pretty sight[xx(][].needless to say the blank was ruined.

now i clean up under the lathe whenever i change to a different type of wood.[][]

 

[cdat]

Evidently the cracks were new, I did fill them with CA and the blank came out very nice. I'm even somewhat proud of myself[:I] for how it turned out. Of course, most (all) of the credit goes to the good advice I've gotten on this forum over the last couple of months. []