so.. now there are paints to buy^^ Or buy painted tubes. Which paints are good enough to buy? I have about a dozen acrylic pens to make. Several of the wood pens have cracked and I figured out why... These people are keeping their pens inside their pockets, under a lay of 40lbs of lead, under another layer of sterile gown during a 4-6 hour case while working in temps of 75ish and under two bright hot krypton spot lights during surgery. No wonder the flipping pens were cracking... moisture content was reaching nearly 60% then drying out over the next week. Regardless of the *DO NOT EXPOSE THE PEN TO WATER< HIGH TEMP<EXTREME CONDITIONS **IT WILL CRACK I got 6 pens back in one week.
I have made 2 of the doodle acrylic acetate pens for trial. Guess what... 2 weeks later.. NO CRACKS. But now there are the "hey, I want one of those pens that are plastic because dr. soandso says his hasn't cracked yet."
But, there are red and black pens, orange pens, ivory, black, and several other colored pens that have been requested in the past few days. I am guessing I am the one who made the mistake of printing out exoticblanks.com, woodturnerscatalog, and pennstateind.com acrylics pages without prices for them to tell me what colors they want. After having ordered several to make a few cigar pens, I am running into the tube being showed at the nib end of each pen.