On the question of non-wood blanks - short answer is it depends. On Alumilite blanks I always consider a coat or two of the orange bottle. It will bring out better color and vibrancy. On other commercial acrylic - I can usually polish it. As for deer antler (another nom-wood) I use GluBoost as my finish also.
Hope this helps.
Hey Mark, quick question for you about using GB on alumilite. I've been doing this, however, when I use just a couple of coats, I seem to sand through it, just a little, somewhere on each blank. I also haven't yet been able to figure out a way to apply just a couple of coats of thin (orange) without there being undulations or something in the surface that usually requires some kind of light sanding back, hence the reason I end up sanding at all and then sanding through.
I've been sanding the alumilite to about 400 or 600 grit....thinking I needed some scratches for the GB to bond to. I'm curious though, how you approach this, and whether you sand to a finer grit, or how you avoid sanding or polishing right through the GB. On my last several pens, I ended up having to turn the blanks a couple thousandths below the caliper diameter, then build back up a thicker coating of CA, to ensure that I could get a truly crystal clear glassy gloss super shiny finish (something that I've only been able to approach, but not 100% entirely achieve, when sanding raw alumilite up to about 20,000 grit or more using lapping pads and a lot of effort). Getting that super shiny glossy finish, which after wet sanding, polishing with HUT Ultra Gloss plastic polish (which brings out the majority of that brilliant gloss that GB is so good at), and finally buffing with blue rouge (eliminates the final bit of super fine scratches that show up in certain kinds of light, HUT just can't quite seem to entirely eliminate all of them), is CRYSTAL clear, hasn't quite seemed to be achievable yet, with just a couple of thin coats of GB. At some point or another, I seem to sand or polish right through somewhere. And its usually not a large defect...its always just large enough, that its unacceptable.
The bummer so far has been, I end up using a fair bit more GB than I should be per pen, due to waste from the initial attempt at thinner coatings, and then having to use more to build up a thicker coating I could sand, polish and buff without concern of going entirely through the finish. Its sometimes a bit more frustrating even than finishing wood blanks, since with the wood, you actually get some penetration of the CA into the wood, and that seems to help in the long run.
