*sigh* - 2 more shattered glass looking CA pens

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Carl Fisher

Carl Fisher

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Jun 7, 2011
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Cape Coral, FL
During our show setup this weekend, we found 2 more pens with the shattered glass look on the CA finish. Both were pens approximately 8-10 months old that were doing just fine. That's a total of 5 pens in the last year and a half (2 belong to customers, 3 were my own inventory) that have had this problem.

The only CA I ever use is EZ so it's not just limited to StickFast that everyone was talking about a while back. I can only think that it's the expansion/contraction of the wood causing it :confused:

Although I consider my CA finish to be of a high quality, I believe it's time to wind down with CA and move to more natural finishes and/or start learning dipped poly finishes. I'm also finding that customers are leaning more to the friction type finishes anyway when dealing with wood. If they like shiny, they tend to buy one of the resin blanks.

I don't have any pictures because I haven't unpacked my carry bag from the show this weekend but I'll try and get some during the week sometime.
 
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Don't give up on CA just yet. You said different BRANDS of CA but nothing about the spray bottle cure stuff. I do seem to remember some posts on here saying it was related to the spray bottle but I could be wrong.

As for durability CA just does not cut it over time. Heavy usage/wear/abuse/environmental they just don't last. If you want something that would hold up and take little to finish off then use stabilized wood.
 
I don't use much (if any) accelerator. When I do, I have the refillable can and use the bulk bottles of mild accelerator from EZ.

I tried Stick Fast in a pinch once but had really bad problems with the spray nozzle. I received a replacement bottle from one of our vendors that ultimately had the same issue. These were not pens from that batch based on when these were finished.

I'm okay with moving away from CA but ultimately I need to find a reliable long term finish.
 
I've always said that wood pens will expand and contract and any HARD finish over them will crack or shatter and the extream is the wood will on some crack also. If a wood pen is made in an enviroment that the average humidity is lets say 50 % and you do a show in Houston avg humidity 90% then a show in Tempe Az avg humidty 10% I will bet 50% of all your wood pens either will have cracked, the CA fiish has shattered or will with in a few days. They just cannot take the stress of expanding and contracting, that's one of the main reasons your higher end pen manufactures make very few if any pens out of wood, especially using a brass tube to wrap the wood which gives it no place to contract. I do agree that stabilized wood will do better but still can expand and contract
 
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Best to use aerosol accelerator and not the pump type. Just a tip that was passed on to me. Has to do with air getting mixed with the accelerator when the pump comes up after pushing in down.
 
tjseagrove said:
Best to use aerosol accelerator and not the pump type. Just a tip that was passed on to me. Has to do with air getting mixed with the accelerator when the pump comes up after pushing in down.
Click to expand...

Last one that cracked on me did it after using aerosol accelerator.
 
I have started using more alternative finishes. My current carry pen is a Qualalacq Lacquer finished segmented pen that had multiple coats that were sprayed on and allow to cure for more than a week before final polishing and assembly. Held up very well for over a months constant use. Need to give it about five more before the verdict will be in but so far so good. I tried dipping lacquers but found the coat uneven, the build up too heavy and it tended to chip over time due to handling. So far this version is much better.

I have used Truoil gun stock type finish which holds up reasonable well but does cause a yellow color shift. Poly, both water based and non water based finishes have some uses with most woods but all seem to have their own limitations. They all seem to work better on more open woods than very dense closed grain woods. Even when reduced to try and get better penetration they seem to be a very surface orientated type finish. And how are you supposed to reduce a water based finish? Use light water instead of heavy water perhaps.

My concern is that I am expecting too much from any one finish. The goal of hard durable finish, that adheres to open and closed type grains, normal and oily type woods, that is both hard and semi flexible at the same time to minimize flexing failure from both handling and wood movement is too much in contrast to find anyone finish that will satisfy all the needs in most cases. Plus we want fast on top of that laundry list. Perhaps pens need several weeks of finishing to get a durable type finish we are looking for. Not that hard to create a finish curing box to keep pen in while they go through a week or more curing. We still can work on new pens while they are aging. You just need to plan ahead and have room for the blanks to rest and cure.

I tried every type of CA system that has been posted here and else where. And to some extent they all work in the short term. But long term they seem to run out of gas in durability or start to chip, fog or crack. Perhaps the wood cracks because the finish is too rigid to allow for easy movement that wood goes through. Stresses are not allowed to gradually be released by movement and the build up causes the wood fibers to break in the end to release the building pressures.

I have noticed I get less cracking on blanks glued with Gorilla type glues than I get with CA glued or even epoxy glues. Evey batch of blanks is recorded in a notebook to see what combos of glue, finish and so on work and what does not. Even wood that are notorious about cracking tend to do much better with Gorilla glues. I think that it is because of the flexibility of the Gorilla glue verses the CA and epoxy. The wood can expand easier with the softer wood to brass interface created by the glue. So maybe I need a softer type of finish like lacquer can be if I find one that last and holds up.
 
I agree with Roy also....

I have a few pens that have been in my inventory for about 3 years now. Just about all the wood ones has shattered CA.

I am almost certain this is caused by heat cycles. I live in Florida and did shows now it gets HOT on some weekends then the pens cool and heat up again in another week or 2. I had some wood pens that were not in the show and did just fine for years in normal conditions (Not left on the dashboard of a car).

OUTDOOR SHOWS ARE NOT NORMAL CONDITIONS...direct sun, heat, humidity, oily fingers, and it goes on....

So when at shows think about heat it's a KILLER

Good Luck
 
This is certainly a hot button topic. There are people in both camps that are equally enthusiastic about there favorite finish. I have had people put down my method because they didn't know how long it would last but we seem to forget about the failures that happen with CA. I was very proficient at putting on a CA finish but became allergic to it so I switched a year ago. I am not looking back for a second. I like the finish that I am using but it took me a long time to find all of the methods that I use. I have a tutorial in the finishing forum about how I do my finish if anyone is interested. Good luck finding your new finish Carl.
 
Could expansion/contraction issues be remedied by using a polyurethane adhesive when gluing the blanks to the tube?
 
It's still wood and wood moves.

I think about customers keeping pens in their purse or heaven forbid in the car or even simply on a desk that is under full sun through a window. These are all just as harsh of an environment as an outdoor show table during the summer.

I'm not anti-CA and will still use it for segmented blanks until I have a stabilization or casting setup, but I'm finding more and more it's not for me. I've been using Dr's Woodshop for quite some time as well and it's very good in it's own way but not a CA replacement.

I think I'll play a bit with lacquer and poly to see if either of those options may be better for my needs.
 
Issue that has been brought up, i.e. gorilla glue, is 'gap filling' also worthy of note is the cured hardness of the bond. When it comes to CA anything that allows flexibility on the final fit will cause cracking like that. This is one of the perks of stabilized wood.

Hardness of the blank, gap between the blank and tube, wood grain structure, how much of a lip the wood grain has when it raises, how well it was sanded, type of wood, wood creepage due to humidity/climate/etc all need to be looked at.

CA may be a great finish but it should not be used for everything. I think when you look at all of the options you will find that a good sanding on good quality stabilized wood is the best.
 
I didn't say it was a bad finish and it's what I'm using for many of my non-segmented pens. But it's ultimately still shellac/oil/wax which is a completely different end product from CA which gives you a hard high gloss uniform finish.

That's why I say it's not a direct replacement.
 
There is a "better option" but like most things there is a price to it. Loktite makes a clear epoxy coating that will not yellow over time, the problem is, UV curing so special lighting required and that is not cheap.
 
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