Alumalite blank looking yellow

[scrofts1219]

Hopefully a quick question. I pulled out of my cabinet an alumilite blank that had inside an Eagle Scout medallion on a tube. It's pre-drilled for a PSI Bolt Action pen. I've made and given away many of them. This time, though, when I pulled it out of the cabinet the clear blank portion looked yellow. Do you think it's yellow all the way through? Would heat or age do this? Has anyone seen anything like this.

 

[1080Wayne]

Have never seen that with Alumilite Clear . In my experience , that kind of yellowing is more typical of epoxies . It may have been cast with Alumilite Amazing Clear Cast , which is an epoxy . That amount of colour intensity shouldn`t affect the finished pen apearance too much , but it may get worse . How long have you had the blank , and whom did you buy it from ? I would contact the supplier .

 

[scrofts1219]

Have never seen that with Alumilite Clear . In my experience , that kind of yellowing is more typical of epoxies . It may have been cast with Alumilite Amazing Clear Cast , which is an epoxy . That amount of colour intensity shouldn`t affect the finished pen apearance too much , but it may get worse . How long have you had the blank , and whom did you buy it from ? I would contact the supplier .

About a year ago. l'll reach out to him.


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app

 

[its_virgil]

Hopefully a quick question. I pulled out of my cabinet an alumilite blank that had inside an Eagle Scout medallion on a tube. It's pre-drilled for a PSI Bolt Action pen. I've made and given away many of them. This time, though, when I pulled it out of the cabinet the clear blank portion looked yellow. Do you think it's yellow all the way through? Would heat or age do this? Has anyone seen anything like this.

Which Alumilite resin? Alumilite is a brand and not a product. They make several resins and the most popular used to make pen blanks are the two urethane resins and the epoxy resin. The urethane resins are Alumilite Clear Cast and Alumilite Slow. The epoxy resin is Aluilite Amazing Clear Cast. I have never had nor seen the clear or clear slow (urethane resins) yellow like that. Every epoxy resin I have used has yellowed after a few months. I have read or seen recently that Alumilite has a new epoxy resin Amazing Clear Cast Plus. Here is a quote from the website " a brilliant high-gloss durable surface, and is FDA compliant; but now brings the added benefit of industry-leading UV resistance." I will stick with the clear and clear slow for some applications and polyester resin for others...no more epoxy resins for me when clear casting.
Do a good turn daily!
Don

 

[bmachin]

My experience with Alumilite Clear (urethane) is that it is not stable with respect to color shifts and will yellow over time unless colored with dye or pigment. An un-colored blank that I cast several years ago yellowed significantly after several months of lying around the shop.

As far as epoxies are concerned, there was a thread here a couple of years or so ago about a product called ArtResin that not only claimed, but showed extremely high non-yellowing when compared to other epoxies available at the time. I don't believe anybody ever gave it a try for pens though. Shortly after that a product called Liquid Diamonds came on the scene which seems to have become a favorite around here. LD claims to be non-yellowing but the last time I looked (quite a while back) I could find no comparative testing. The new Alumilite product only claims industry leading UV resistance. Here is it's tech data sheet:

https://dev.alumilite.com/sites/default/files/instruction/pdf/TDS_Amazing%20Clear%20Cast%20Plus.pdf

Probably more than anybody wanted to know.

Bill