angboy
Member
Well I'm ashamed to say I messed up the 3D blank so nicely supplied to me by Creative Dimensions. But I'm hoping maybe my review will help some to others who may attempt one of the blanks, so here goes...
I was offered the chance to cast a 3D Creations blank and was sent one by Alton, that had the name of basketweave if I remember correctly. When I got it, I guess I hadn't realized that it would come with the tube already inside. All of the casting I've done to date has been on items that I placed in a mold and then would drill out to put the tube in myself, so I knew this was going to be a new experience and perhaps a challenge to my casting skills. I remembered that a long time ago I had printed out instructions from its_virgil, on casting snakeskin tubes and figured I could use the same method- I had even bought some corks back then so I had all the supplies. So I set about doing the casting. Casting itself went OK, using that method, although I think I may have made my first mistake when I put a lot of pressure on the ends of the tube when setting it up for casting. I glued the corks to scrap wood and then, since a sierra tube is way shorter than my molds, I filled the extra space with some cactus skeleton to cast. When I took the cast tube out of the mold, I could immediately see that somehow, near the end, the basket weave seemed to have split a little bit, and so some brass from the tube was shining through. I figured I could cover that up with the pen clip though and thought I'd still be able to make a nice pen out of it.
Then came trying to get the cork out… another area where I probably should have done something differently. I ended up trying to use sandpaper to get the thin layer of CA glue that seemed to have seeped into the inside of the tube out. At first I didn't think I'd need to do that, but I intended to use the bushings that I have that are for turning between centers, and one thing I've learned from prior experience, is that those fit very tightly, so if there's any residue in the inside of your blank, the bushings won't go in. So when the bushings wouldn't fit, I started sanding the inside of the tube. After several times of stopping and seeing that they still wouldn't fit, I decided to try regular bushings that are turned on the mandrel, since those seem to not fit as tightly. So I got out a set of those and now the barrel would fit. I didn't realize til later how big of a mistake all that sanding turned out to be, but I'm sure people were probably cringing, thinking ahead to the problems I'd have, as you read that…
I turned the pen down and was all set to do sanding, but as I got into the finer grits, I realized that there were areas that weren't shiny, and realized that I'd ended up sanding through and was now hitting the actual wood blank. I'd purposely made the pen rather plump in the middle, because I was wary about sanding through the PR, but apparently I still turned it down too far. I definitely don't see how one could do a bushing to bushing turning with this.
So then I applied a CA finish to the blank and managed to get a nice shine all around. Then it was time to assemble the pen. Yep, you guessed it, I had sanded out so much of the brass tube in the middle that it just fits loosely over the nib part of the sierra pen, so when I saw that it wouldn't even stay on the nib section, I didn't bother putting it together actually and pressing the clip end into the barrel, which probably also would have been too loose.
Somehow, it just seemed like the 3D aspects of the blank were lost. I don't know if it was a factor of casting it in the pressure pot maybe? But that seems unlikely to me. It just seems like when you look at the blank, you really can't see or appreciate the great 3D look that was there before I did anything to the blank.
Also, for some reasons the ends of the tubes turned sort of muddy looking. I'm not sure if it was the brass showing through and maybe a larger exacerbation of what I saw through the casting where it looked like I had split part of the tube, but it sort of looked like that, as if somehow my casting muddied up the ends of the tubes. So even if I could figure out some way to put a thin layer into the inside of the brass tube so that it'd fit tightly, I'm not sure I would make it into an actual pen, since I think you'd be able to clearly see how the area right between the end of the tube and the pen hardware on the kit just didn't look very good. I couldn't get a good picture of this with my camera, but the best way I can describe it is muddy and discolored.
In summary, I like the way these blanks look, but I don't think my casting skills are capable of doing them justice. I don't know if someone else who maybe has more experience with casting would be able to get them to turn out nicely. I'd definitely buy a 3D blank like this if it was already cast, or I'd buy another one and do something with it like I saw another reviewer did, where he painted color over the blank and essentially used the 3D aspect to get the color only on the lower layer (probably a lousy description, but hopefully people understand what I mean), but then it seemed to be finished with CA on top of that. I don't know that I think this particular pattern would work as well for that kind of application, because I think instead of still maintaining a nice flower pattern as seen in the other one I saw reviewed, you'd end up with sort of half rubbed off diamond shapes, so in my mind at least, this particular pattern may not be the best choice for that.
I'll try to attach some pix to show some of the things I referred to in the review... The first picture is to show how the CA finish wasn't consistent and there were some dull areas. The second picture is to show the end that I'm trying to describe looking muddy.
I was offered the chance to cast a 3D Creations blank and was sent one by Alton, that had the name of basketweave if I remember correctly. When I got it, I guess I hadn't realized that it would come with the tube already inside. All of the casting I've done to date has been on items that I placed in a mold and then would drill out to put the tube in myself, so I knew this was going to be a new experience and perhaps a challenge to my casting skills. I remembered that a long time ago I had printed out instructions from its_virgil, on casting snakeskin tubes and figured I could use the same method- I had even bought some corks back then so I had all the supplies. So I set about doing the casting. Casting itself went OK, using that method, although I think I may have made my first mistake when I put a lot of pressure on the ends of the tube when setting it up for casting. I glued the corks to scrap wood and then, since a sierra tube is way shorter than my molds, I filled the extra space with some cactus skeleton to cast. When I took the cast tube out of the mold, I could immediately see that somehow, near the end, the basket weave seemed to have split a little bit, and so some brass from the tube was shining through. I figured I could cover that up with the pen clip though and thought I'd still be able to make a nice pen out of it.
Then came trying to get the cork out… another area where I probably should have done something differently. I ended up trying to use sandpaper to get the thin layer of CA glue that seemed to have seeped into the inside of the tube out. At first I didn't think I'd need to do that, but I intended to use the bushings that I have that are for turning between centers, and one thing I've learned from prior experience, is that those fit very tightly, so if there's any residue in the inside of your blank, the bushings won't go in. So when the bushings wouldn't fit, I started sanding the inside of the tube. After several times of stopping and seeing that they still wouldn't fit, I decided to try regular bushings that are turned on the mandrel, since those seem to not fit as tightly. So I got out a set of those and now the barrel would fit. I didn't realize til later how big of a mistake all that sanding turned out to be, but I'm sure people were probably cringing, thinking ahead to the problems I'd have, as you read that…
I turned the pen down and was all set to do sanding, but as I got into the finer grits, I realized that there were areas that weren't shiny, and realized that I'd ended up sanding through and was now hitting the actual wood blank. I'd purposely made the pen rather plump in the middle, because I was wary about sanding through the PR, but apparently I still turned it down too far. I definitely don't see how one could do a bushing to bushing turning with this.
So then I applied a CA finish to the blank and managed to get a nice shine all around. Then it was time to assemble the pen. Yep, you guessed it, I had sanded out so much of the brass tube in the middle that it just fits loosely over the nib part of the sierra pen, so when I saw that it wouldn't even stay on the nib section, I didn't bother putting it together actually and pressing the clip end into the barrel, which probably also would have been too loose.
Somehow, it just seemed like the 3D aspects of the blank were lost. I don't know if it was a factor of casting it in the pressure pot maybe? But that seems unlikely to me. It just seems like when you look at the blank, you really can't see or appreciate the great 3D look that was there before I did anything to the blank.
Also, for some reasons the ends of the tubes turned sort of muddy looking. I'm not sure if it was the brass showing through and maybe a larger exacerbation of what I saw through the casting where it looked like I had split part of the tube, but it sort of looked like that, as if somehow my casting muddied up the ends of the tubes. So even if I could figure out some way to put a thin layer into the inside of the brass tube so that it'd fit tightly, I'm not sure I would make it into an actual pen, since I think you'd be able to clearly see how the area right between the end of the tube and the pen hardware on the kit just didn't look very good. I couldn't get a good picture of this with my camera, but the best way I can describe it is muddy and discolored.
In summary, I like the way these blanks look, but I don't think my casting skills are capable of doing them justice. I don't know if someone else who maybe has more experience with casting would be able to get them to turn out nicely. I'd definitely buy a 3D blank like this if it was already cast, or I'd buy another one and do something with it like I saw another reviewer did, where he painted color over the blank and essentially used the 3D aspect to get the color only on the lower layer (probably a lousy description, but hopefully people understand what I mean), but then it seemed to be finished with CA on top of that. I don't know that I think this particular pattern would work as well for that kind of application, because I think instead of still maintaining a nice flower pattern as seen in the other one I saw reviewed, you'd end up with sort of half rubbed off diamond shapes, so in my mind at least, this particular pattern may not be the best choice for that.
I'll try to attach some pix to show some of the things I referred to in the review... The first picture is to show how the CA finish wasn't consistent and there were some dull areas. The second picture is to show the end that I'm trying to describe looking muddy.
