More dyed pen experiments

[jimr]

This is my latest attempt. I found out that more dye really helped. I used an eyedropper and flooded these sections with dye. About 1/4 dropper per color. I just kept turning the lathe by hand and applying more dye. The left line on the red-blue one is a small cut with a skew point. That pretty well stop any bleeding. The right line is a wire burn. The yellow turned out much more intense than I had experienced before. The green is yellow and blue dye mixed. Not as green as I wanted. I don't think mixing these analine dyes will give a real intense color, at least I can't get it. I also found out the dye penetrated much deeper than I expected. I had to turn down about 1/16 in to get out of any color. After the dye dried I gently applied mylands sealer and had very little smearing. Buffed that out and applied friction polish. It is not as glassy as I would like but I hope that is because I only went to 280 grit sanding before applying the dye. Oh, yeah- the wood is holly. I was going to turn a holly pen anyway. Anyway, this is my latest experiment.

 

[penhead]

Jim,
I have started playing around with the sample kit of analyne dyes from CSUSA...kinda fun actually.
I turned a pen last night for a valentines gift, only the wood I picked turned out to be orange...little red dye..wood was for sure red...

...just curious how you are applying the dye to your blanks...sounds like you are putting them directly on the wood from the eyedropper?......I had tried with a papertowel and with a cloth and seem to lose more on the rag than goes on the wood...

By the way, those look like they have a nice deep color..nice job.

 

[jimr]

John, I was applying the dye the same way as you and could not get a good rich color. On the blank above I used an eyedropper and squeezed it out directly on the wood. I turned the lathe by hand and kept on applying more dye. I used a quarter of a dropper full I imagine. I have also found out that holly is not the ideal wood. It is to dense and white. I tried a mixture of blue and red on a piece of curly, spalted maple. It turned out a brown instead of purple but it really looked good on that maple curl.
I also wanted to see if a tiny cut would prevent bleeding and it worked good. You just have to be careful when squeezing the dye out of the dropper.
Let us see some of your dye experiments.

 

[tipusnr]

I would be interested in hearing more about the dying process and/or technique myself. I haven't tried any of this yet.