Help needed

[soligen]

I'm having some difficulty I can use some pointers on.

I'm having trouble getting the wood flush with the nib. Usually it comes out a tad too think.

Started working on CA/BLO finish, and the ends end up with a white ring. To combat the white ring, what I did is make some bushing out of an extra brass tube - swap them in when ready for finish so the bushing isnt flush with the wood. That help a lot with the white ring - it was "inside" the end and a quick touch with the barrel trimmer took care of it. Only problem is that this time the wood was smaller than the nib. I don't think it was becasue I removed the bushings. I put one coat of stabilizing CA on before I swapped the bushings and final sanded with higher grits (up to 2000).

Any sugestions?

Good news is the CA finish worked out - just not as glossy as I would like. I buffed it with some Minwax furniture wax, but I think that actually softened the gloss a bit.

 

[Monty]

Do you mic the end of your barrels before you start your finish? The bushings you buy are not always a close match for the pen parts. I always mic my parts and turn and sand to the pen part size, not the bushings.
As for your CA finish....did you polish with micromesh or white diamond before you buffed with wax?

 

[emccarthy]

I agree completely with measuring your parts and turning the barrel to match. Personally, I use calipers to measure rather than a micrometer, but that's mostly due to the anvils on my mic being too big to deal with any taper or curve I may put into the barrels of my pens.

As far as your white ring, if you are wet sanding/wet MMing the CA creates a white slurry, which if you allow it to dry on the pen will leave that ring. During my attempts at a CA finish, I would wipe the barrel almost dry with a clean soft cotton cloth to remove any residue between grits.

HTH

 

[soligen]

Thanks for hte replies. I have both Micrometer and calipers - I'll try it both ways.

I think I have the white ring problem licked.

I think I need to put on more coats of the CA too, as I can just slightly feel the grain of the wood. I dont know how many coats I put on - I just stopped when it looked decent.

I have blanks glued up with click pen tubes that I'm gunna try tonight. Hopefully all will be good. I've put off trying out anything else new until I get these basics down.

 

[Dudley Young]

You'll get a better shine if you use BLO between each coat of CA.

 

[ldb2000]

BLO should NOT be used between coats of CA . The BLO is used as a lubricant during application of the CA and serves no other function . The BLO will prevent adhesion of the CA to the layer below . To get a higher gloss you have to remove the scratch patterns from the sanding process . Use a quality plastic polish or buff with a polishing compound to get a high gloss .

 

[soligen]

Thanks all. Pretty good result tonight. Best I could do was sanding back to 2000 grit, which gave me basically a semi gloss. I'll have to find some polish or buffing compound.

 

[themartaman]

White ring can be caused by accelerant or kicker.