Thuya and AMboyna problems

[delirious_1]

Hi,

Recenlty I made a few pens out of Thuya and Amboyna (sp?)

The wood shrank and now, a mm of brass is showing. Is there something I can do to prevent this?

 

[delirious_1]

BTW, these have been stabilized.

 

[Dario]

First you can try to disassemble the pens and mill the brass down a bit.

I am surprised that you have shrinkage problem and on stabilized pieces too. I turned my share of amboyna (non of them are stabilized) and never ahd any problems. I have no experience with thuya so can't comment on that.

Where did you buy the blanks? Who stabilized them?

 

[cd18524]

I am no expert, but I would think if the wood was properly stabilized it would not shrink or expand, at least not any amount that would be noticeable.

If the kit is not length sensitive, trim down the tube to the wood.

Chris

 

[delirious_1]

Originally posted by Dario
<br />First you can try to disassemble the pens and mill the brass down a bit.

I am surprised that you have shrinkage problem and on stabilized pieces too. I turned my share of amboyna (non of them are stabilized) and never ahd any problems. I have no experience with thuya so can't comment on that.

Where did you buy the blanks? Who stabilized them?

Small world Dario. I have seen you on the woodnet site. I am Dr. Matt there. I bought them on a website but don't remember where right now, I would have to look back. I have thought about milling down the brass. They are on cigar pens which should not affect the mechanism too much. I know when I have mistakenly ground down some of the brass on the twist type hart pens, the pen protrudes too much and won't retract fully. Still, this fixes these pens but I don't want to have to go back in the future. I just can't understand why these.

 

[Dario]

What can I say...I am everywhere [:I]

I can't believe it either. Probably those are not properly dried and stabilized. Time to buy elsewhere...we have some great wood sellers here BTW. Check the classifieds every now and then. []

 

[toolcrazy]

Best to check if your blanks are dry. Drill one for a kit and put it somewhere warm and dry. Wait a couple of weeks and see if the tube fits through the way it did when you drilled it. If it don't then the blank wasn't dry. If I have a question about how dry a lot is, the I use this method to find out.