Questions about painting tubes

[Rusty skew]

Hi,

I am a new penturner and I just recently started painting the tubes when turning acrylic blanks.

I painted the tube and inside the blank with a small brush and craft acrylic paint that I bought from Michaels. When I tried to install the tube it was too tight, causing the paint to come off the tube when I pushed it into the blank to test the fit before glueing. I retried several times and it still didn't work. Is there a better way to keep the paint on the tube?

The other question is.....

I use gorilla glue to install my tubes into the blanks, but i am wondering if this is leaving a light beige color between my acrylic blank and tube. I know that the glue is beige colored when the excess glue seeps out the ends, but I am wondering if the very thin coat between the tube and the blank would show as clear or colored. I like using gorilla glue and don't want to switch to epoxy if I don't have to.

Thanks

 

[LostMountaineer]

Painting Tubes

Try spray painting them with a color matching or close to the blank color. Expensive I know but that is the best way I found to deal with this problem. Another thing I have tried and had good sucess with is using a contrast color such as black against a red blank, causes some interesting changes in the color of the pen and some of my customers went wild about them.

Be very carful of how much paint that you use. this is the main problem you are fighting right now. I have yet to get good results with bush on paints myself. I try to stick with spray on and very light coats. Just enough to cover the brass. I use Gorilla glue on the painted blanks. I found that super glue acts a lot of the time as a solvent and messes up the paint.

Good Luck

 

[SteveG]

Welcome to the forum.

Some people use spray paint on both tube and hole, which covers good and goes on thin. You can also enlarge the hole by sanding, a rat file or a larger bit. Don't over do this, you still need a good fit.

As far as glue color, it is probably too spread too thin to be a problem. You might try gluing two pieces of clear material together to see what color, if any, is evident.