Help with Acrylic

[terry q]

My first venture into Acrylic. I bought rattle snake from Arizona Sihlouette and don't want to trash it. How should I approach this blank and with what tool?

Terry

 

[mrcook4570]

Cut the corners on a bandsaw, then use belt sander to take it down to near the finished size. Put it on the lathe and use a very sharp skew. Be careful when sanding not to generate too much heat as it can cause "pitting" in the blank. The acrylic in the snake skin blanks is much more brittle than other acrylics and resins.

 

[JimGo]

I usually knock the corners down (if it's a square blank) with a disc sander (or sand paper stuck to a face plate, in my case). Then I use a round-nose scraper. The scraper has a smaller surface area that actually makes contact with the blank, thus reducing the heat and the likelihood of a catch. Just be careful, it can really hog off a lot of PR!

 

[gerryr]

When I got my snakeskin blanks from BB, there was a sheet with some hints about turning it. What Stan and Jim said is the way to do it, especially rounding the edges before you start turning. Like Jim, I use a round nose scraper and sharpened it several times while I turning the snakeskin. Take very light cuts and you should be fine. I've never been so nervous turning anything as I was turning that.

 

[mick]

I guess I didn't know any better the first couple of times I turned the rattlesnake blanks from BB. I just stuck em on the lathe and used a very sharp round nosed scrapper and took off the corners with very , very, did I say very light cuts. Once I had the corners off I used my very, very, sharp skew and turned them to size. That was the first two I did. The next two a Baron and a Cigar I used the same method with my round nosed scrapper but had a catch with my skew and blew out first the top blank on the Baron and then the bottom barrel of the Cigar. Luckily the two different skins matched fairly well so I used the lower barrel of the Baron for the lower barrel of thec Cigar, which are almost the same size(the Baron is just a hair bigger)I simply glued the fittings into the barrel and salvaged one pen from two losses.By the way did you know that the tubes of those blanks are painted green? [:0] DAMHIKT

 

[terry q]

Thank you. I see that easy does it is the way to go. I will post after I get it done so you can see how well I did.

Terry