Munsterlander
Member
I've been alternating between Russ F's video (CA then BLO) and Don Ward's article (3 drops of BLO then CA) trying to get a consistent result with CA/BLO. It's still totally hit or miss - great when it hits, awful when it misses.
Here's the problems I'm seeing and a couple of questions:
1) The biggest problem I'm having is not clouds, but whether I use MM between coats or just wait to 'til the end, I get a lot of white "flakiness"/garbage on the CA surface (it's not loose), and much of the time I can't seem to clean it up short of going pretty much all the way back to the wood. Does not happen all the time - whatever I'm doing pretty consistently works great on curly pyinma, but, on desert ironwood, for example, I get this pretty consistently. Sometimes I can "clean it up" by using EEE, and sometimes I give up at that point and go ahead and finish with friction polish (which actually looks not bad over an undercoat of CA). Incidentally, I see this problem whether I use either the video or the article.
2) I do get clouds at times, and they seem to happen most often when I have a barrel with a fairly thick part (larger diameter) relative to the ends of the barrel. I suspect I'm getting sand-through most of the time when this happens - is there a trick to avoiding this other than the obvious? Given a higher point in the barrel I'm sure if I'm not careful that's the spot that will get sanded the most when I MM. But it occurred to me that in addition to that maybe I'm doing something wrong on those high points when I apply the CA glue - maybe I'm not getting as much on at those points as I need to?
3) I've read a ton of posts and it sounds like most of you wind up with a very smooth surface between each coat - in some cases not even needing to sand (I think Russ mentions going straight to buffing somtimes? I may be remembering that incorrectly.). I'm not getting this, and it doesn't seem to matter whether I keep the paper towel on the barrel for a longer period of time (Don says a frequent source of failure is not staying with it long enough) or a shorter one. Sometimes I even get bits of the paper towel getting embedded in the glue if I stay very long. So I'm wondering about specifics of what you guys are doing with the paper towel. Say it's Don's technique, 3 drops of BLO first and then CA - applied directly to the barrel in one pass with the paper towel underneath - once the glue is on, do you use the same part of the towel the whole time you go back and forth? At some point it gets a bit crusty as the CA starts to cure. Same thing if it's Russ' technique with BLO on the towel after the CA is applied. Stay in the same spot? Or do you move to a clean area to go back and forth?
Incidentally, I've tried this with plain white paper towels and with blue shop towels, no appreciable difference.
You might conclude from my posts that my "operation" is a bit of trainwreck, so I do want to say it's not all bad - I might have to spend 3 hours on the finish for one pen, but for most of them I eventually get something with which I'm satisfied. I was in a class last week with a bunch of engineering professional types and at the breaks wound up selling 14 pens and grossing around $650. 'Course I've still got about $3K to go before I cover my startup investment and stock of wood and kits - but it was still pretty exciting!
Thanks for any guidance.
-Mike
Here's the problems I'm seeing and a couple of questions:
1) The biggest problem I'm having is not clouds, but whether I use MM between coats or just wait to 'til the end, I get a lot of white "flakiness"/garbage on the CA surface (it's not loose), and much of the time I can't seem to clean it up short of going pretty much all the way back to the wood. Does not happen all the time - whatever I'm doing pretty consistently works great on curly pyinma, but, on desert ironwood, for example, I get this pretty consistently. Sometimes I can "clean it up" by using EEE, and sometimes I give up at that point and go ahead and finish with friction polish (which actually looks not bad over an undercoat of CA). Incidentally, I see this problem whether I use either the video or the article.
2) I do get clouds at times, and they seem to happen most often when I have a barrel with a fairly thick part (larger diameter) relative to the ends of the barrel. I suspect I'm getting sand-through most of the time when this happens - is there a trick to avoiding this other than the obvious? Given a higher point in the barrel I'm sure if I'm not careful that's the spot that will get sanded the most when I MM. But it occurred to me that in addition to that maybe I'm doing something wrong on those high points when I apply the CA glue - maybe I'm not getting as much on at those points as I need to?
3) I've read a ton of posts and it sounds like most of you wind up with a very smooth surface between each coat - in some cases not even needing to sand (I think Russ mentions going straight to buffing somtimes? I may be remembering that incorrectly.). I'm not getting this, and it doesn't seem to matter whether I keep the paper towel on the barrel for a longer period of time (Don says a frequent source of failure is not staying with it long enough) or a shorter one. Sometimes I even get bits of the paper towel getting embedded in the glue if I stay very long. So I'm wondering about specifics of what you guys are doing with the paper towel. Say it's Don's technique, 3 drops of BLO first and then CA - applied directly to the barrel in one pass with the paper towel underneath - once the glue is on, do you use the same part of the towel the whole time you go back and forth? At some point it gets a bit crusty as the CA starts to cure. Same thing if it's Russ' technique with BLO on the towel after the CA is applied. Stay in the same spot? Or do you move to a clean area to go back and forth?
Incidentally, I've tried this with plain white paper towels and with blue shop towels, no appreciable difference.
You might conclude from my posts that my "operation" is a bit of trainwreck, so I do want to say it's not all bad - I might have to spend 3 hours on the finish for one pen, but for most of them I eventually get something with which I'm satisfied. I was in a class last week with a bunch of engineering professional types and at the breaks wound up selling 14 pens and grossing around $650. 'Course I've still got about $3K to go before I cover my startup investment and stock of wood and kits - but it was still pretty exciting!
Thanks for any guidance.
-Mike