Turning Pen Barrels w/ CA finish

[Donnie Kennedy]

I know this has been disused many times over, but a "search" for my answer has turned up hunderds of possibilities and getting the answer to my question is like finding a needle in a haystack so I'll just ask...

I have been experimenting with producing a professional looking CA finish and I am confident in the process now. At this point I have just been putting a CA finish on practice pieces so the diameter of the end result was not an issue.

When making an actual pen, I am assuming that to (consistently) compensate for the thickness of the finish on the pen barrels between the turning down to proper size and the addition of the CA finish that you have to turn them down just shy of the required outside diameter and build the finish up to where the O.D. needs to be on the finished product for a proper fit.Am I correct?

 

[Drstrangefart]

What I do is match the bushings with the wood as close to perfectly as I am capable of. Then run Micromesh on my CA until it's as close to flaw-free (still working on that part) as possible. It usually fits perfectly at that point. If you want the best practice possible, buy up a batch of dirt cheap Slimlines and work out the kinks in your process on those. I also use a lot of found wood, due to the type of work I do there's PLENTY of it. I may have 2 or 3 max in one of those pens. The practice is very relaxing and therapeutic, so it's no major concern for the time spent. And they usually sell for around $30 when they do sell. That's how I'm learning while I work.

 

[Donnie Kennedy]

Yea... I do plan on making a bundle of slims before jumping on to the kits that I like. I have been turning for several years but just recently got interested in pens so this whole process is new to me. I spend too many free hours researching and contemplating and still feel as if I've only scratched the surface.

It's sort of funny to me that I have several thousands of dollars tied up in tools and equipment, but I still don't have all of the tooling I need to turn a proper pen... I do have some antiquated hand-me-downs that I have spun a few pens with but I have a box of goodies on order now so hopefully it'll all arrive next week sometime.

Thus far everything I've turned was made from "free" wood... I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by several acres of turning stock, but I am interested in a lot of the different woods and other materials I've been seeing used by turners here.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Yes, sir. I've used FIMO (think Sculpey), Leather, Denim, Acrylic, Wood, Coke can, all kinds of stuff. Your imagination can really run wild with the need for such small quantities of material to make a blank. I use a roughing gouge kept as sharp as possible to do most of my work, followed by a skew if I wanna skip sanding. That's it. CA finish and I'm good to go. If you're on several acres, I reccomend making small, infrequent harvests of material as you find it. You never know when those free materials will be needed for something. Right now I'm curing some serious oak I got at work. Huge knots where like 6 or 7 branches grew out on some huge oaks. Grain's crazy. I gotta get all I can get my hands on when stuff like that happens.

 

[Donnie Kennedy]

If you're on several acres, I reccomend making small, infrequent harvests of material as you find it. You never know when those free materials will be needed for something.

I'm ahead of the game in that respect. I have a lot of bowl sized turning stock that's ready to go. I am going to order a 14" Rikon band saw in a couple of months to start processing that wood. A fair amount of it will end up as pen blanks. As soon as the sap goes down a little farther in the trees I'll cut a few more down and start processing them... rinse and repeat.

A tornado came through here about 5 years ago and damaged a lot of trees and some are dying from the top down so as I determine that individual trees aren't going to make it I am recycling them. I also have a guy down the street that excavates for new construction and hauls 18 weeler dump truck loads of stumps and other assorted tree parts back to his place on a regular basis.... that reminds me... I need a new chainsaw chain.

 

[Drstrangefart]

You got it going on. I grab a lot of stuff I find that got damaged and dried out on the tree. I have a small Ryobi bandsaw and a cheapo table saw that I use for blank making. All the oak I got is twisting and warping like crazy while it dries. I want it to be really distorted when it's finally cured out. I also find a lot of spalted stuff at work. picked up a few armloads of firewood sized water oak with some HEAVILY spalted areas in it. Probably have enough for 15-25 pens easily. If you get into the tornado damaged trees you can likely grab whatever is good and dead and leave the rest of the tree standing. Eventually as those damaged areas heal up it'll have some REALLY insane grain inside. I also look for healed damage when I'm doing any limb/tree work.

 

[Shock me]

To your original question, yes. The CA finish will have an appreciable thickness, depending on your application technique and this must be taken into account to get a perfect mate to the component.

Once you have settled on your finish technique- how many layers of which kind of glue applied by what applicator, you can measure a barrel before and after finish to know how thick your CA layer is. Measure carefully your component diameter, do not rely on the bushings which may be off by quite a bit, especially if well worn. Turn your barrel thinner than the component by the same amount as the thickness of your CA layer. Measure each step along the way and either add more CA or sand more away to get to the exact size of the component.

 

[Donnie Kennedy]

To your original question, yes. The CA finish will have an appreciable thickness, depending on your application technique and this must be taken into account to get a perfect mate to the component.

Once you have settled on your finish technique- how many layers of which kind of glue applied by what applicator, you can measure a barrel before and after finish to know how thick your CA layer is. Measure carefully your component diameter, do not rely on the bushings which may be off by quite a bit, especially if well worn. Turn your barrel thinner than the component by the same amount as the thickness of your CA layer. Measure each step along the way and either add more CA or sand more away to get to the exact size of the component.

Thanks for the reply... That was the only answer that made sense to me as I was thinking trough this matter. The subject just doesn't seem to come up in the CA finishing videos that I've watched... in fact, to the best of my knowledge, all of them that I've watched seem to be turning and sanding down flush to the bushings, adding their CA, polishing it out, and calling it done. I'll just assume that is because the purpose of the videos is to show how to do the finish in a limited amount of time.

Now I'll have to order some bigger bottles of glue and take a few measurements and make a few notes.

 

[Drstrangefart]

I match all of my barrels to the bushings and I DON'T add like 15 coats of CA. I do enough for a deep gloss, but nothing ridiculous. The only time I have poor fitment is when I have issues getting the barrel down to the bushing. The ones I went undersized slightly on to accomodate CA just looked WRONG when assembled. But as it seems with everything else in pen turning, find what works for YOU because you gotta turn it.

 

[Donnie Kennedy]

I understand what you're saying about the coats used Allan. I started out trying 3 coats of thin which wasn't enough but I was as happy with 6 coats as I was with 10. Now that I've proved to myself that I can achieve good results, I am going to order some larger quantities of thin, medium, and thick and play with it a little more and probably tweak my process. I'll also add that I was amazed at the overall appearance of the pieces I've polished out so far.

 

[Drstrangefart]

I normally use 4 coats thin, 4 coats medium unless there's a specific reason to do otherwise.

 

[leestoresund]

My most recent process was 3 coats of thin and 3 coats of medium then mm to 12K then plastic polish.

 

[Drstrangefart]

I MicroMesh to either 10 or 12 k myself. I would have to go read the numbers on the pads. I just go through all of 'em. Sometimes I'll add one last coat of thin after the MicroMesh and use the last 3 pads on it again for an extra clean gloss.

 

[Donnie Kennedy]

Before I started messing with this CA stuff, it had been so long since I'd used my MM I had forgot where I put it... once I found it, I had a hell of a time getting the grits sorted out. The color chart doesn't look much like the actual colors of the pads, and when I did get them sorted out I remembered that when I first ordered them, the kit I got had 2 of one grit in the package so I am missing one of the pads entirely. Although I can't see any scratches, I think I'll order a new set.

 

[OKLAHOMAN]

Donnie, once you have the grits sorted take a magic marker and starting with 1500 mark each grit with dots on the side begining with 1 dot for 1500 up to 9 dots for 12000...

 

[Donnie Kennedy]

Roy...I don't know much about pen making, but I read this forum daily, and I remembered reading that suggestion in another thread a week or 2 ago. As I was deciphering the color code I did just that.

 

[OKLAHOMAN]

Donnie, that's not my idea it belongs to my friend Don Ward (it's_virgil).That's where you most likely saw it....

Roy...I don't know much about pen making, but I read this forum daily, and I remembered reading that suggestion in another thread a week or 2 ago. As I was deciphering the color code I did just that.