Now here's a toughy ...

[Kaspar]

... or maybe not.

I have a customer in England. He's bought two Statesman fountain pens in stabilzed buckeye burl over the last two Christmases.

He wants an "all organic" pen. No plastic, no metal, no synthetic glues used, no synthetic resin stabilization, drilled, tapped, and shaped to fit a parker duofold nib, and made from buckeye burl.

I have a pretty good grip in how to do most of this, but there are two huge problems:

1) Unstabilized buckeye burl is very soft and weak. I could perhaps vacuum stabilize it with an organic glue after drilling and turning turning so that there's a good chance the glue will permeate all the wood, then it might be strong enough, except ...

2) I cannot find an all organic glue. Or even a recipe for making one. Maybe there is one out there that I am unaware of or maybe something like wood glue is "organic". I don;t know.

Any comments, suggestions, advice on how to proceed, and the clearing up of misconceptions welcome.

 

[its_virgil]

Maybe hide glue, made from cattle hides.
http://www.bjorn.net/prod.htm
Do a good turn daily!

don

Originally posted by Kaspar
<br />... or maybe not.
2) I cannot find an all organic glue. Or even a recipe for making one. Maybe there is one out there that I am unaware of or maybe something like wood glue is "organic". I don;t know.

 

[alamocdc]

Hide glue is what came to my mind too. It has no real shelf life so you have to mix it on an as needed basis. However, it's quite thick using the prescribed portions so you will have to thin it down to a consistency that might penetrate the wood. It's slow setting and thinning it down may well slow it down even more. Nothing wrong with trying.

About the cheapest I found was here.

 

[Kaspar]

Fantastic, guys!

Two heads (or more) really are better than one. I have already bought some.

 

[leehljp]

For the life of me I cannot remember but I can almost see the can - there used to be a can of powder readily avialable at most hardware stores that you mixed water with to make a wood glue/cement. IIRC, it was basically a hide or natural based powdered glue. Last time I used it was in the mid -80s - before I came to Japan, but I used it all the way back to the mid 50's.

I will ask this question on the woodworking forum that I visit daily. I am sure there are some people there that will remember or even have that.

 

[vick]

Maybe stabelize with shellac?

 

[Kaspar]

Shellac is an all natural product, isn't it? Might keep that in mind too.

I have just found the only hide glue maker in North america and they offer a considerable selection of hide glue grades. For purposes of stabilization it appears I will want to use a low gram grade and thin it down to assist penetration. I am thinking that two concentric cylinders of the unstabilized Buckeye Burl can be effectively stabilized and glued together to make a very strong pen barrel.

Furthermore there is a way to make hide glue waterproof by adding 1/2 to 1% aluminum sulfate to the wet glue, or exposing the dry glue to formaldehyde fumes. Nifty.

I think with this info, coupled with that article from here about using a pickle jar and hand vacuum pump to do a home stabilzation, we might just be onto something.

Once I'm sure I can do this part, I'll come back and ask you all about tapping and dyeing.

Most interesting. Thanks for all the help.

 

[Dario]

Here is a COUPLE low tech approach.

Get some cassava powder and cook with water to form a paste. It will become clear and will harden once dried.

You might not believe it but egg white will work too! Do not cook it, just let it dry and it will be very hard once dried. They used egg white to build a lot of churches during the Spanish era and (centuries later) a lot of them still stand today.

Best part...both of this you can get from your grocery store (if not in your refrigerator) []

 

[Kaspar]

Originally posted by Dario
<br />Here is a COUPLE low tech approach.

Get some cassava powder and cook with water to form a paste. It will become clear and will harden once dried.

You might not believe it but egg white will work too! Do not cook it, just let it dry and it will be very hard once dried. They used egg white to build a lot of churches during the Spanish era and (centuries later) a lot of them still stand today.

Best part...both of this you can get from your grocery store (if not in your refrigerator) []

Might use that for the finish. But this guy wants a pen with no brass tubes made out of Buckeye Burl, and that unstabilized unless I can find an all natural stabilizer. And I've been wanting to try that vacuum in a pickle jar thing anyway. Hide glue is a proven quantity.

One thing wrong with that article about home stabilization. He should have repressurized the pickle jar once the air had been removed from the blanks and sunk to the bottom of his polyeurethane. I would have ramped it up as far as I thought the lid could take it.

 

[loglugger]

Kaspar, I use the gallon jar to stabilize pen blanks. All that I have read about glass is you don’t want to put pressure to glass, if it happens to blow up the glass will go into anything in it’s way. Bad thing if you are one of that anything. Under vacuum it will just clasps into itself. I use vacuum and have not had a problem but will not use pressure.
Bob.

 

[Kaspar]

Yeah, I had thought about that. But the best stabilization processes use negative and positive pressure to acheive the deepest penetration of the stabilizing agent. I was thinking glass for the vacuum (I really want to see that bubbling effect), and something metal for the positive pressure. I don't plan on pumping it up too much. But glass would definitely be a bad idea for positive pressure.