End Sealing

[Todd in PA]

Hi!
We'll that's no good!

Material: Redheart
Finish prep: wet sand with walnut oil using micromesh.
Finish: 3 coats PensPlus (walnut, wax, shellac)

My question is about end sealing the barrel. Apart from some walnut oil going on the end grain, it's not sealed.

Does one need to seal the end grain to prevent moisture related cracking with this finish?

 

[jttheclockman]

Hi!
We'll that's no good!

View attachment 344554
Material: Redheart
Finish prep: wet sand with walnut oil using micromesh.
Finish: 3 coats PensPlus (walnut, wax, shellac)

My question is about end sealing the barrel. Apart from some walnut oil going on the end grain, it's not sealed.

Does one need to seal the end grain to prevent moisture related cracking with this finish?

Any finish needs to have ends sealed especially when wet sanding especially with water.. But humidity will play havoc with wood when wood is not sealed on all 4 sides. This is evident many times when veneers are used and people only veneer the top of a project. Any top coat finish even a wipe on shellac seals the wood grains to a degree.

 

[Todd in PA]

Thank you. I guess I should have been more specific. I'm seeking opinion about what I should seal the end of the barrel with before using PensPlus? I'm looking for technique. A splash of walnut oil didn't help this pen.

 

[jttheclockman]

Thank you. I guess I should have been more specific. I'm seeking opinion about what I should seal the end of the barrel with before using PensPlus? I'm looking for technique. A splash of walnut oil didn't help this pen.

My thoughts are, most people finish their pens with CA so thin CA works well for sealing end grain. In your case shellac will seal end grain but I would use it solo and not mix with oils. Or you could use thin CA. Then apply your finish.

 

[Roly]

I always nowadays seal the ends of the tubes by putting some CA on a paper towel and just rotating the blank on this. Super thin coating but does the job and will other finishes on the main part.

 

[Todd in PA]

Thanks for your replies! IAP is one of the most helpful sites I've been on (not just pens).

I turned my pens to rough size and then sealed the ends with thin CA puddle on a piece of wax paper.

It created a new chore of filing the glue ridge out of the tube and gently re-sanding the ends.

Next time I'm going to try Roly's method with the paper towel. I think that will result in less glue where I don't need it, and hopefully be enough of a moisture barrier to keep the wood stable.

Thanks!

 

[duncsuss]

I turned my pens to rough size and then sealed the ends with thin CA puddle on a piece of wax paper.
[...]
It created a new chore of filing the glue ridge out of the tube and gently re-sanding the ends.

I use that same "CA puddle on wax paper" technique.

My final step before assembly is to run a sharp knife around the tube ends anyway - to chamfer the end of the brass and ensure the press-in parts don't hit a sharp corner on their way in. I just clear away any CA that snuck up inside the tube at the same time.

 

[jrista]

Thank you. I guess I should have been more specific. I'm seeking opinion about what I should seal the end of the barrel with before using PensPlus? I'm looking for technique. A splash of walnut oil didn't help this pen.

Are you certain it was drying that caused the crack, and not pressure from the fittings?

As far as sealing with Pens Plus, I use the walnut oil as well. I will pretty thouroughly saturate the end grains, and I also leave the blanks to dry for a good while with just the oil so it seeps in good. I will do as many coats of the oil as necessary, until it stops soaking in, before I use the Pens Plus. If you fully saturate with oil, that should completely seal the wood...

I've had cracks like this, in a number of materials...but it always, sooner or later, seems to be due to pressure from the fittings. There was actually a recent thread about reaming out or enlarging the tubes to a slip fit (before drilling and gluing them in) to avoid this. I have found that the "inevitable" cracking of buffalo horn, seems to be due to pressure from the fittings as well. I had a number of buffalo horn pens crack, usually a week or more after finishing the pen. They would start just as a tiny barely visible notch at the ends, then eventually work its way across the entire blank, like your crack. I was baffled, as the first couple of times, it seemed to take 2-3 weeks before the cracks even appeared... I guess its just a slow process, maybe due to the specific nature of horn and its flexibility? Anyway, in the end, as far as I can tell, it was actually due to pressure from the fittings.

 

[Todd in PA]

The answer is that I don't know what caused the crack. I've blamed pressure from the fittings for a long time. I ream the tubes wider and switched to lathe pressing the parts. But I'm still getting cracks, so it occurred to me that lots of wood cracks come from drying and that maybe it's not the fittings, but climate.

The trouble with slip fittings is that once you glue the pieces together it's often impossible to disassemble the pen without damage. Meaning that if it does crack, I can't remake the pen.

No big deal this one. I'm just trying to improve my craft and cover my bases to minimize pen failures.

 

[mmayo]

I seal after finishing the pen. I flush sand the ends and clean the end of dust. I take a paper towel fold it as much as possible and use that as a soft base for a single small piece of blue towel. I add a drop or two of thin 5 cps CA and touch the pen to the wet spot. I do all pens in my group and repeat this three times on both ends. After a few minutes I sand the pens with 3D printed TBC bushings so the ends don't round off. I buff and know the pen blank is sealed from brass tube to the ends to the entire surface. This leaves no place for hand moisture to enter. I do this with every wood pen.

 

[Todd in PA]

I seal after finishing the pen. I flush sand the ends and clean the end of dust. I take a paper towel fold it as much as possible and use that as a soft base for a single small piece of blue towel. I add a drop or two of thin 5 cps CA and touch the pen to the wet spot. I do all pens in my group and repeat this three times on both ends.

Thank you. I've adopted this practice. I do the end sealing after micromesh and end sanding, just prior to buffing.

 

[jrista]

So, something happened to me today. Thankfully, when I started assembling, the room was totally silent and I heard a slight crackling sound before anything was damaged or cracked...BUT! With a rollerball kit I'm working with, I've found that the black plastic sheath that slides inside the cap, with this particular kit (antique retro rollerball, IIRC), the sheath is pre-glued to the fitting. In most rollerball kits that I've made thus far, these two parts are just slip fit to each other, but not glued.

Today, I found that the glue often bleeds out from the fitting of the two parts, and there is a little bulge of glue (it seems fairly hard, but has just a bit of flex, so I am thinking its epoxy...although its very clear). On one of the kits in particular, the excess was was fairly large, and if I had continued to try and press the parts together, I have little doubt that the crackling sound I was hearing would have ended up in an actual crack in the blank (wood in this case). I ended up grabbing an razor blade and carefully pried and cut off that excess glue. The parts fit together without issue after that.

I've never run into this problem before, but now its been added to my list of assembly steps to always check. I guess you never know the exact quality of your parts. I've made a number of these kits before in the past, and never had any problems, nor ever noticed any excess glue (in fact, in some of the kits in the past, I'm fairly certain the two parts were separate, or at least separable!)

 

[Mike]

I don't remember where I saw this, but I am pretty sure it was here on IAP. The post I read said to seal ends with thin CA after gluing blanks on tubes and trimming, before turning. I have been applying thin CA 2 or 3 times, until it stops soaking in. I have been using Don Ward's BLO/CA finish and so far have not had discoloration of the blank after turning and finishing. I use a hobby knife to clean inside tube and chamfer the end of the tubes. I have been doing this since mid-summer and no cracks so far. Probably not long enough for a real test.