Blank Finishing Touches

[Jmhoff10500]

How do you guys make your blanks nice and smooth when you make them square? Every time i try to trim them up the saw either gums up or the sander tears up the surface to the point you cant see the colors in the blank. So how do you guys make anice clean surface particularly on WW Casts?

 

[Brooks803]

when I would cut blanks on my bandsaw I'd put a small amount of thin CA and wipe with a paper towel to bring out the colors. Now that I have my table saw the blade cuts much nicer and it's not needed.

 

[Craftdiggity]

I cast all of mine to the correct thickness so that the only cuts are on the sides. I don't bother polishing the sides up. The colors can be seen clearly on the tops and bottoms.

 

[Jmhoff10500]

how would you polish up the side if a cut is necessary?

 

[ed4copies]

how would you polish up the side if a cut is necessary?

No good answer, Jonathan.

IF you cut with a coarse blade, you will have to sand, etc until you can buff out the remaining scratches.

If your blade was finer--you may be able to buff right away.

All plastic will shine, just need to get out the scratches.

 

[Craftdiggity]

If I had to polish the sides up, I guess I'd just go ahead and sand them up to 400 or so, then buff em up. If I was going to do this regularly, I'd come up with a way to line them all up and use a ROS or something if I could find the higher grits. It's not something I would want to do often.

When I used to buy acrylic blanks from stores like Woodcraft, the sides were never shiny. They obviously use a fine blade and the sides looked good, but you could see that it was dull and not always smooth.

 

[KDM]

I'm not sure why you'd want to polish the sides. I guess you're taking photos or selling them? I tend to turn them round between centres and then polish them as if they were a finished pen. Those are the ones which get photographed.

I don't bother polishing the sides up. The colors can be seen clearly on the tops and bottoms.

I've had really bad luck with this. My blanks always look correct from the cut sides, with the top and bottom rarely being representative of the pattern. If I have crush, it sinks almost to the bottom so it can't be seen from top or bottom and in the case of swirls, the different colours sink at different rates, so I find I have to get it perfect to the millisecond or else the swirl might not even BE visible from the top!

 

[Craftdiggity]

I'm not sure why you'd want to polish the sides. I guess you're taking photos or selling them? I tend to turn them round between centres and then polish them as if they were a finished pen. Those are the ones which get photographed.



I've had really bad luck with this. My blanks always look correct from the cut sides, with the top and bottom rarely being representative of the pattern. If I have crush, it sinks almost to the bottom so it can't be seen from top or bottom and in the case of swirls, the different colours sink at different rates, so I find I have to get it perfect to the millisecond or else the swirl might not even BE visible from the top!

You might try putting some in , letting it sink to the bottom, then waiting for the PR to start to set up before adding the rest. This way, you will have a more even dispersement.