Yikes!

[Sandsini]

You know how sometimes you can get quite full of yourself and you think. "I'm on a roll, my pens look good, 'cause I've got a very refined aesthetic sense," and then you do something that just slaps that stuff right out of you? Well, welcome to my nightmare.

When I saw this material from Eugene, Four Color Opal, I thought it looked interesting and might make a good pen. Then I figured it would look good as a closed end pen with white accents, um... no. It looks like a baby shower gift.

So, in addition to it's relative unattractiveness, I also had a problem where the white finial on the lower section of the pen meets the body. You should be able to see in the photos, dark spots where the finial meets the body, and I have no idea what this is from. I used CA to glue the two sections together and then turned them as one piece. It's possible that this has been happening on my other pens, but since I usually use darker materials I haven't seen it before. Has anybody else seen this or know what it the cause is?

 

[Skie_M]

Foreign material that made it's way into the glue joint, would be my immediate guess.


Be that as it may, I recently picked up the exact same blank .... but the one I have is more blue, I think ... not much red/green in mine either.

I also picked up the Red/Green Opal from the same source ... it's just lovely! In fact, I'll be using that for my PITH swap.

 

[Sandsini]

Skie,
I love Eugene's blanks... I am crazy for his monoswirls and peals, but this one looked much better before I turned it (and the white accents don't help any either).

I originally thought that the black line was a gap and that something had gotten in there, but it's smooth and filled. I tried cleaning it with DNA to no avail. I'm pretty sure that there was no contamination of the glue joint, and I used fresh thick CA, made sure I had a full covering of the joint with no gaps and hit it with accelerator before letting it dry. To me it looks like something overheated in the joint, but I'm not sure.

 

[thewishman]

Love Eugene's blanks, too, but you're right about this combo. Maybe the mark in the joint is a sign...

 

[Sandsini]

My wife thought that SOMEONE, would probably like it, but I am ready to take it apart for salvageable parts and hide what's left down at the bottom of my trash can.:redface:

 

[duncsuss]

I like the clip ...

 

[Sandsini]

I like the clip ...

Duncan, You are obviously someone who looks for the good in everything...

There's got to be something good there... yesss, the CLIP!

 

[Skie_M]

Well ... if all else fails, you can give it as a baby shower gift!

 

[liljohn1368]

That's a really nice pen Eric. Great job.....

 

[KenV]

The colors do not bother me but are not special to my eye -- and I know a couple of women who would love that pen -- they are "pastel ladies" to turn a phrase.

We are our worst critics -- but the black spots do make an other wise exemplary piece of work look less than its best.

 

[wyone]

maybe it is just me.. but my first thought was.. put it back on the lathe.. turn a groove at that point.. fill it with like gold dust and refinish it. I like it

 

[Sandsini]

Great idea Mitch! I might try that.