CA flaking off ???

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bitshird

bitshird

Member
Joined
Aug 27, 2007
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10,236
Location
Adamsville, TN, USA.
This is weird, I did a pen back in July, was putting tags on it for a show and it looks like the top coat of CA is flaking off in places, I always clean between coats either with accelerator, or DNA, it's just on this one pen and it's got me bumfuzzled, normally I do 2 to 4 coats thin, wet sand with 400 then apply another couple coats of thin, wet sand with 600 then a couple coats of Med, any body have an Idea what happened??
 
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I'd say the operative word in your process is 'normally' if this is the only time it's happened. With that many coats and chemicals there's alway an opportunity for something to go wrong.
 
I had that happen to me on a snakewood pen a couple of years ago. I never did find what caused it. I sanded the ca off and applied several coats of laquer and now I stay with a laquer finish on all of my wood pens, at least the very few wooden ones that I make.
 
Bruce the wood was some very dry Curly maple, I have several pens done from the same board,(I cut most of my own blanks and fingers) I've had Ca get cloudy or blush on oily wood, but this beats any thing, I'm beginning to think possibly the Med CA was at about the end of it's use full life span, I wasn't turning much as it was quite hot, I keep my 8Oz bottles in the fridge, but the small bottles stay on the lathe, Just puzzles me the way it's just flaking off, and it was on the first Gentelmens pen, now I gotta take the sucker apart.
 
This has happened to me once on an IBO pen I made for my wife. One could scratch off the CA easily in flake form with the fingernails. I believe it happened because of old, i.e. thickened CA glue. Since then, I always do some scratch test from time to time.
 
Is is possible you simply waited too long between two coats? So that the undercoat cured so completely that it was difficult to bond to. And then you might have used enough accelerator with the next coat to have it harden before it could bond.

Marc

bitshird said:
Bruce the wood was some very dry Curly maple, I have several pens done from the same board,(I cut most of my own blanks and fingers) I've had Ca get cloudy or blush on oily wood, but this beats any thing, I'm beginning to think possibly the Med CA was at about the end of it's use full life span, I wasn't turning much as it was quite hot, I keep my 8Oz bottles in the fridge, but the small bottles stay on the lathe, Just puzzles me the way it's just flaking off, and it was on the first Gentelmens pen, now I gotta take the sucker apart.
Click to expand...
 
Marc, once I start on finishing I move along pretty swiftly since I work between centers I think that the most likely scenario the CA was getting stale, now the chore is trying to get that monstrous center band plastic sleeve out of the cap with out destroying it, I turned a piece of acetal to just fit the inside of the tube,I didn't want to risk using a transfer punch against the delrin, hopefully it won't damage the center band coupler, the sticky part is trying to hold the cap in my left hand and hitting it with a hammer, I still don't have much strength in it yet, going to try some monkey grip gloves to hold it.
 
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