sorcerertd
Member
This may be interesting to a few people around here. The bleaching didn't work as well as I expected, but the result shows the light/dark growth rings better than without bleaching. Usually, to my eyes, the lighter rings just disappear when I put finish on, and then it looks like a plain dark brown piece of wood.
In the pictures there are two pieces of bleached Wenge. You can see that one is a bit more bleached. The one I used for this pen is the less bleached one. It had soaked 2 hours as opposed to the 10ish hours on the other piece. They were turned down to about a mm over the bushings (thickness, not diameter). The bleach didn't penetrate as far as I had expected. You can see the difference after turning it down in the pictures also. I guess I'll turn them down closer to proper size before doing this again.
Also worth noting is that the ink cartridge that came with it has a slightly longer extension because of the shoulder being slightly different (lower? if that's the proper term? if there even is a proper term?). The standard Schmidt 888 and Pilot G2 both fit perfectly, with equal extension in this pen. I suspect most folks would be pretty happy using the G2 refills anyway.
In the pictures there are two pieces of bleached Wenge. You can see that one is a bit more bleached. The one I used for this pen is the less bleached one. It had soaked 2 hours as opposed to the 10ish hours on the other piece. They were turned down to about a mm over the bushings (thickness, not diameter). The bleach didn't penetrate as far as I had expected. You can see the difference after turning it down in the pictures also. I guess I'll turn them down closer to proper size before doing this again.
Also worth noting is that the ink cartridge that came with it has a slightly longer extension because of the shoulder being slightly different (lower? if that's the proper term? if there even is a proper term?). The standard Schmidt 888 and Pilot G2 both fit perfectly, with equal extension in this pen. I suspect most folks would be pretty happy using the G2 refills anyway.
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