First attempt at a Kitless Pen

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
See more from jhiggi83

J

jhiggi83

Member
Joined
Jun 26, 2025
Messages
15
Location
Kearney, MO
Which happens to use my first attempt at pouring resin. This was a challenge to complete and didn't turn out the best but I did learn a lot. I didn't want ro use my hobble creek blanks on a first try so I made a couple of my own blanks out of alumilite. I probably redid each peice once since I kept breaking pieces. Breaking stuff did help dial in my mandrels for the cap, body, and section though. I cut my own out of aluminum and it took a few tries to get a solid Mandel, that supported the blank while turning.

tempImageykIA2s.jpg
tempImageuOZk9l.jpg

tempImagelfXXRn.jpg
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Nice job for a first pour and first pen!

The pour is really pretty, but as you can see, the resin is pretty transparent. If this was intended, great job, but if not, a good suggestion I got from watching Zak Higgins of Resin Werks Studio is to judge the opacity of your color by stirring with a wooden popsicle stick. Once you put your die or mica in, stir it good, then pull the stick out and see if you can still see the stick through the resin. If you can, the pour will have transparency, if not, it is opaque. Add more die or mica to the mix if it is too transparent until the stick disappears on the pull.

You can also get great swirls of mica and deeper opacity by adding a little colored opaque die into the resin, stir it in, then add your mica to produce the swirling effects. I typically use white to do this, but you can use other colors of opaque dye to build up the density, but adding the die first will cut down the transparency and not force you to overwhelm the resin with mica.

Keep working!!!!

Kevin
 
NJturner said:
Nice job for a first pour and first pen!

The pour is really pretty, but as you can see, the resin is pretty transparent. If this was intended, great job, but if not, a good suggestion I got from watching Zak Higgins of Resin Werks Studio is to judge the opacity of your color by stirring with a wooden popsicle stick. Once you put your die or mica in, stir it good, then pull the stick out and see if you can still see the stick through the resin. If you can, the pour will have transparency, if not, it is opaque. Add more die or mica to the mix if it is too transparent until the stick disappears on the pull.

You can also get great swirls of mica and deeper opacity by adding a little colored opaque die into the resin, stir it in, then add your mica to produce the swirling effects. I typically use white to do this, but you can use other colors of opaque dye to build up the density, but adding the die first will cut down the transparency and not force you to overwhelm the resin with mica.

Keep working!!!!

Kevin
Click to expand...
Thanks, no the transparency was not intended. I used alumilite green die for the base and mica for the blue and white. I waited until each hit 100 degrees F and then poured. I stirred lightly with a brass rod but I was worried about stirring too much and didn't stir enough
 
jhiggi83 said:
Thanks, no the transparency was not intended. I used alumilite green die for the base and mica for the blue and white. I waited until each hit 100 degrees F and then poured. I stirred lightly with a brass rod but I was worried about stirring too much and didn't stir enough
Click to expand...
I don't think the 'stir' when pouring would that greatly affect the transparency since you waited to a good temp to pour and if you are pouring Alumilte Clear Slow setup time is relatively quick minimizing settling of the mica. The pour temp will give you color separation and you got it, so the temp of pour was good. I do vertical pours, so sometimes the mica will settle out if you pour to early possibly giving you less opaque areas, but the vast majority of your opacity IMHO is from the base coloring. I would up the dye level in the base a bit and it will help get some density so the threading is not as obvious. Have fun!

Kevin
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom