Working with inlace acrylester - a celebration!

[thewishman]

I love the brilliant shine and rich colors of inlace acrylester, but sometimes (meaning often) have trouble with chips and brittle ends that break below the bushings. After swearing off trying the stuff, again, I had to try making a cigar pen from a beautiful molten metal blank yesterday.

Drilling was perfect (thanks to the Norseman drill bit) and turning led to the usual frustrations. The ends broke off more times that I could switch bushings, and my skew was making small chips for some reason. I was about to quit but decided to try a burl treatment to save the pen.

Using chips and dust from turning, I filled in the missing end chunk with CA. Then, sanding with 320 grit, I used CA and sanding dust to fill in the chips - like a sanding sealer. Results were better than my expectations - perfectly smooth and shiny with no evidence of repairs.

Now that I can fix my mistakes, I'll be more confident using inlace.</u> (The straight up end at the nib is the filled in chunk.)

Chris

Edited for emphasis

 

[ed4copies]

Chris,

Roll your tool over the ends as soon as it is nearing round!!

Another approach is to bring your skew up to the edge of the material with the skew very near horizontal, trimming off the ends to make them "radiused". This will result in any chipping not getting as deep as the bushings.

Tried unsuccessfully to add primitive drawing. Will work on it again tomrrow afternoon.

 

[stevers]

I would use my disk sander to sand the blanks round after I glued in the tubes. This was before I got to were I could get them round with tools. Sharp tools and light cuts is the key you will hear from the folks here. The light cuts helped me a lot.

 

[Monty]

Chris,
like you I love the finish I can achieve with the inlace acrylester blanks. My blank survival rate drastically improved after I started doing the following:
1 - make sure my skew is sharp and take very light passes
2 - rounding over the edges with a belt sander or make sure my skew is sharp and take very light passes
3 - after getting the blank to round, round over the ends by moving the skew from the bushing to the center, repeat on
the opposite end
4 - make sure my skew is sharp and take very light passes
5 - move very slowly across the center of the blank to shape it
6 - make sure my skew is sharp and take very light passes

I assume you will notice the pattern here. I have noticed that even when being extra careful, there seems to be some inconsistency in the blank and at times the blank will "give" and my skew will dig in somewhat. If you move slow enough when cutting, you can feel this and recover in time to prevent any major damage to the blank.
Finally, when I think I need to take "one more pass" I'll stop and start sanding to the final diameter I want.

 

[thewishman]

Guess I should have made my title more clear. Thanks for the suggestions and encouragement. I have turned inlace with success and have several favorite pens of that material.

My aim in this post was to celebrate a new (to me) treatment for fixing problems that I have experienced. I used to just throw away a blank with the mentioned problems - now those can be repaired. That made me want to share a technique that may help others who encounter similar challenges.

Chris

 

[keapople]

Well, thanks to those that posted tips. this stuff can be very frustrating. I have a survival rate using traditional turning techniques of about 75%, but there is a 90% rate with other materials...

Soooo, any tips are appreciated...

Congrats Wishman on your sucessful save...

Kirby

 

[redfishsc]

With Acrylester blanks (admittedly one of my own more difficult materials) I find honing my skew with either a 600-grit diamond stone, or with a honing wheel/strop w/paste drastically improves survival rates.

You only need to clean up the skew every couple minutes on the diamond stone rather than crank up the grinder.


As others have said, I also round over the ends as I turn, being VERY careful to roll the skew over as I cut the round-over.

In a nutshell, here's what I do, normally,

1)roll over the ends, but only until the ends are true-up (ie, the blank is no longer square on the ends). I do NOT go to the bushings yet.

2) True-up the rest of the blank so it's all round and not square.

3) Cut the ends all the way to the bushings (except stay a hair fatter than the bushings for sanding).

4) shape the rest of the blank.




Couple of other tips:

-Make sure your skew's grind isn't too steep or shallow. I don't know the proper angle by the "handbook" but I know a good angle when I see it based on experience.

-- Rub the bevel of the skew a LOT. Keep the bevel of the skew almost perfectly parallel to the blank when cutting--- only lift it enough to start the cutting action.

-- move carefully.