First acrylic pen

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Drewboy22

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Joined
Aug 21, 2015
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Location
San Antonio, Tx
PSI Executive with blue swirl

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Nice pen. I really like the Executive pens. I have a blank ready to turn sitting right there all glued up for a chrome Executive.

Curt
 
Nice ! . You are right ... you should use some paint ... I recommend silver ... it's best to paint the inside of the drilled hole (you can paint the tube also).
 
You can even use spray paint. Exotic Blanks has some good videos on dealing with many acrylic issues, including painting the blank.
Keep in mind your final tube thickness you are looking through will only be about 40 thousand. Latex house paint won't do as it is too thick. I'd use Krylon.
 
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All I paint is the inside of the blank. I use a Q-tip and the little squeeze bottles of craft paint from Michaels. They regularly have them on sale and I grab a few colors at a time for 50 cents a bottle. There is way more in a bottle than I will ever use in most colors (black always gets used up as well as white) before it goes bad. When you paint the inside of the blank you don't see any of the adhesive gaps if there are any. They are under the paint so that's a big advantage of the method if anyone needs a reason. Also it covers better than on a slick or even roughed up metal tube when using this paint. Spray, of course, would cover either way.
 
Yeah, I used to use those to airbrush with but they dry out the gun too quick and makes them hard to clean. Ideal qualities in a tube paint. But they're still not Latex.
 
Thanks guys.

I need to work on a few things... Next time I need to paint the tube and work on making even cuts.

Just get it close, especially if it's chippy. Even cuts are overrated unless you NEED to finish it with a skew, such as with segmenting woods that bleed colors into each other or working with hybrid material blanks (metal and wood or stone and wood, though stone has an entirely different means of inlay).


Then grab some coarse abranet 120 grit or whatever ya got that'll take material medium fast and hold it above and below your spinning barrel ... let the sanding material take out all the lumps and bumps and give you a very SMOOTH curve on the barrel, or you can just back your sanding material with something flat to give a nice flat surface to your blank.

I often hold my abranet at an angle to give an even curvature to the ends of my blanks as I work them down to final dimensions... As I get close to what I want, I work my way up to 400 grit abranet before I go to 600 grit wet/dry and then 1000 grit wet/dry. All this sanding is done dry.

At this point, if I'm working with wood, I'll clean the surface with rubbing alcohol (91%), then apply Minwax stain and seal (natural), followed by my first coat of CA. 6 to 9 coats of CA and back to finishing process as though I were dealing with acrylic.

Wet-sanding for acrylic starts at 1000 grit, to make sure the last of the bumps are all gone, with lateral sanding to remove radial lines. Then I jump to 3200 grit micromesh and proceed rapidly to 12,000 stopping at 3200, 6000, and 12,000 to sand laterally. Polish with PlastX, then give it a coat of Turtle Wax.


I have other posts that deal with stone inlays and stone working. :)
 
Good job Drew. I really like the Executive pen but like you have found it is really necessary to paint the tubes and the inside of the blank. I also like the acrylics. I use the acrylic craft paints available at any craft store and most wally world stores. My wife must have 50~100 bottles in almost any color I want so it's a no brainer for me. Just be sure to let it dry for a day or so before gluing s in place. Keep up the good work and keep posting photos!
 
It did come out well and I am sure you learned a few things from it.

Just would like to add a comment that was not mentioned. Painting the inside of the tube is probably the best thing to do and that is what I always do with translucent blanks such as these. But what I also suggest is to sand the inside of the blank before you paint. Just take some 400 grit paper and roll it up and insert in the blank or you can wrap some around a dowel and do it that way. What that does is gets rid of those pesky drill marks and ridges. Does make a difference. Keep up the good work.
 
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