budnder
Member
I was very intrigued when I saw this pen, made from from some sort of aluminum honeycomb mesh and alumilite:
More4dan's Majestic Squire
So thought I'd give it a whirl. I found the honeycomb mesh here:
Honeycomb Mesh at Amazon
Others no doubt were similarly inspired... here's another crack at a pen based on this:
Cwalker935's Honeycomb Pen
I had some old Allumilite (the kind that you have to warm up to even come close to pouring), so thought I'd just use it up trying to make a block of blanks from the mesh.
I used a Ptownsubbie 5.25" x 6" x 1" mold. Using a bandsaw, I cut a chunk of honeycomb mesh to size. I went slow and it cut easily. These blanks take a lot of Allumilite, as the mesh doesn't occupy much space. I measured out the amount of water needed to fill it to ¾" tall at 375 grams. And then mixed up about that much alumilite. I had a half a dozen or so plastic cups waiting with yellow, green, and blue mica powers, and stirred in the resin cup by cup. I took each cup and poured it randomly into the mesh. I guess Alumilite weights more than water, or my math was off somewhere, because I was way short – maybe 100 grams or so short of having enough. So I quickly mixed up some more clear resin and just dumped it on to the mesh to fill things up. The mold went into the pressure pot and sat overnight.
The block looked good, though I was regretting not throwing some die in with the mica powders – without die sometimes things get too translucent for my taste. And dumping that clear on top to fill things up probably didn't help either. Oh well. For a pen kit, I decided to try a Le Roi Long Body, as it's a thicker walled pen, and I knew from other reports that this mesh may want to come apart. I cut a blank sized chunk of the block with no issue, and turned it round between centers. So far, so good. I then mounted it in a collet for drilling. I center marked it, then, starting with a quarter inch bit, worked my way in a couple of steps to 25/64. Drilling went fine. When I tried to pull the drilled blank out of the collet, it came apart in the middle. Oops… I should have pushed it out of the collet instead of pulling. It was a clean separation – a little medium CA and then clamped it tight back together – you'd never know it happened.
I back painted the blank yellow, the tube yellow, and mixed a little yellow die into the epoxy. I tried to be extra thorough with the epoxy when gluing the tube into the blank. I figured it was the epoxy that was going to hold this thing together from the inside once I started turning it. It turned like Alumilite. Failry early on, I had a small "hex" chunk come off the very end. I continued to turn it down and the same thing happened on the other end – a small "hex" chunk came off. I was able to finish turning, but had those two little pieces missing on the ends to deal with. I mixed up some epoxy and mica and filled in the "hex hole" with that.
I finished it with a little CA, wet micromesh through 12000 then Novus #1 & Novus #2.
The only kits I have on hand in the Le Roi Long Body are gold and gun metal – I did not like the looks of this blank with that. I have some black and chrome on order, so will wait for that to assemble it into a pen. I don't expect any issues in assembly.
Next up, I'm going to try a cigar out of these blanks.
More4dan's Majestic Squire
So thought I'd give it a whirl. I found the honeycomb mesh here:
Honeycomb Mesh at Amazon
Others no doubt were similarly inspired... here's another crack at a pen based on this:
Cwalker935's Honeycomb Pen
I had some old Allumilite (the kind that you have to warm up to even come close to pouring), so thought I'd just use it up trying to make a block of blanks from the mesh.
I used a Ptownsubbie 5.25" x 6" x 1" mold. Using a bandsaw, I cut a chunk of honeycomb mesh to size. I went slow and it cut easily. These blanks take a lot of Allumilite, as the mesh doesn't occupy much space. I measured out the amount of water needed to fill it to ¾" tall at 375 grams. And then mixed up about that much alumilite. I had a half a dozen or so plastic cups waiting with yellow, green, and blue mica powers, and stirred in the resin cup by cup. I took each cup and poured it randomly into the mesh. I guess Alumilite weights more than water, or my math was off somewhere, because I was way short – maybe 100 grams or so short of having enough. So I quickly mixed up some more clear resin and just dumped it on to the mesh to fill things up. The mold went into the pressure pot and sat overnight.
The block looked good, though I was regretting not throwing some die in with the mica powders – without die sometimes things get too translucent for my taste. And dumping that clear on top to fill things up probably didn't help either. Oh well. For a pen kit, I decided to try a Le Roi Long Body, as it's a thicker walled pen, and I knew from other reports that this mesh may want to come apart. I cut a blank sized chunk of the block with no issue, and turned it round between centers. So far, so good. I then mounted it in a collet for drilling. I center marked it, then, starting with a quarter inch bit, worked my way in a couple of steps to 25/64. Drilling went fine. When I tried to pull the drilled blank out of the collet, it came apart in the middle. Oops… I should have pushed it out of the collet instead of pulling. It was a clean separation – a little medium CA and then clamped it tight back together – you'd never know it happened.
I back painted the blank yellow, the tube yellow, and mixed a little yellow die into the epoxy. I tried to be extra thorough with the epoxy when gluing the tube into the blank. I figured it was the epoxy that was going to hold this thing together from the inside once I started turning it. It turned like Alumilite. Failry early on, I had a small "hex" chunk come off the very end. I continued to turn it down and the same thing happened on the other end – a small "hex" chunk came off. I was able to finish turning, but had those two little pieces missing on the ends to deal with. I mixed up some epoxy and mica and filled in the "hex hole" with that.
I finished it with a little CA, wet micromesh through 12000 then Novus #1 & Novus #2.
The only kits I have on hand in the Le Roi Long Body are gold and gun metal – I did not like the looks of this blank with that. I have some black and chrome on order, so will wait for that to assemble it into a pen. I don't expect any issues in assembly.
Next up, I'm going to try a cigar out of these blanks.