I really should have known better

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Old Griz

Passed Away Oct 4, 2013
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There are times I can be dumber than a box of rocks... and today was one of them.... :(:(
Drilled a couple of acrylic blanks for some Elegant Americans...
Sanded the tubes and glued them in with epoxy like I usually do... of course I ran out of epoxy for the last blank...
SOOOOOO, being lazy and not wanting to mix more, I decided to glue up the last blank with thick CA... something I rarely use for gluing tubes...
OF COURSE, the tube stuck 3/4 of the way into the blank.. locked up like a bank vault... without thinking I dumped the blank into a small jar of acetone I keep for cleaning bushings and went back into the house to wait for the CA to break free...
Came out a half hour later and YUP you guessed it... soft goeey acrylic blank in the CA jar with the tube still stuck fast inside it... Yes, I know that acetone disolves plastics and acrylics... Yes I know that I should not have put the blank in the jar to free up the tube... And yes I know:
There are days when I am dumber than a box of rocks...
 
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I'm really not sure which of these to post in, but you aren't the only one that has ever done something only to realize that, "Oh sh%*, I knew better than that!. What was I thinking?!" I do it more often than I'd like so you are not alone! [:I]
 
Originally posted by Dario
<br />Doing a double post too.

Hmmm...you better go in and relax Tom. You might mess up more pens! LOL [:p]
Click to expand...

Don't know how it double posted... you can only hit the button once... must be a glitch somewhere..
But I am not taking any chances.. out of the shop for the rest of the afternoon... [;)] Besides I have to go over homework with my daughter...
 
Yowzers! I hate it when that happens. I was also wondering if just CA crazes acrylic? On the prototype base of my new pen the acrylic is getting all the little crack marks. I don't know if it's from CA, accelerator, the heat of the reaction with accelerator, the stress put on the part, or coolant or something else. I know polyester should be fine with CA, but I'm not sure with acrylic. I guess it's a moot point on that one. Sorry about your pen.

On the flip side, is the gooey mass something that can be squashed and/ or molded into an assymetric shape? It might be worth trying to see if something new and different can be rescued from it.
 
Sorry for your loss, Tom. Not that I'm expert, but I sometimes have the same problem, and have figured out how to salvage the pen. I carefully cut the tube off with my little band saw, clean up the end and slide it into the other end with enough glue to lubricate it and let it meet the other end. I, then, re-mill the end and make sure the insides of the tubes are clean.

The bad part of doing this is that you have a weaker pen, unless the tubes are tight and glued together. Your blank is also shorter, in my case about 1/16th inch.

Bruce
 
Sorry to hear about the loss Grizz.
I have had that happen occasionally and with a solid wood blank it's bad enough though not a disaster.
Can you imagine what its like when you do a glue up with wood & CA?
You wind up with a jar of acetone and a bunch of little pieces of wood sitting in the bottom of the jar.(DAMHIKT)
 
Bummer for the blank, Griz, but you know, you're a lot smarter than me! I never thunk to drop a jam-up into my acetone!
Like a dummy, I would go to the bandsaw, cut off the sticking-out part of the tube, and re-glue it into the other end of the barrel.

Shows you what *I* know. [;)]
 
Originally posted by Czarcastic
<br />Bummer for the blank, Griz, but you know, you're a lot smarter than me! I never thunk to drop a jam-up into my acetone!
Like a dummy, I would go to the bandsaw, cut off the sticking-out part of the tube, and re-glue it into the other end of the barrel.

Shows you what *I* know. [;)]
Click to expand...

Wise Guy... [;)][;)]

Well today I decided to do exactly that.. I cut off the offending piece and epoxied it in the other end...
Now the only thing I have to do is be extremely careful about the trim length. The Elegant American is extremely critical in the length of the upper barrel and of course that is the one that I screwed up... will see later if I was able to save it...

Eagle... I don't even want to think about having to pick through all the little thin pieces of wood in a bath of acetone to figure out what I need to do next... I have enough on my plate using unlaminated blanks... of course one of these day I may get adventurous and give some of your stuff a try... don't expect miracles though... will have to see how good my scroll saw skills still are... been doing a lot more turning than scrolling lately... [^]
 
Griz-Your predicament just might get me to try something I have been thinking about for a a while.
It has been suggested that in the event you get a jamb-up when preparing blanks,to try to drill out the tube using a drillpress.
From experience I have found that to be a bad idea.
Lately while doing the glue ups I have been doing I am using my Beall Collet chuck more to drill the blanks on the lathe.
When I get done making a blank they are not always square and rather than trim them off on the TS I have been turning them between centers to 3/4's and using the collet to hold them while drilling on the lathe.
What I am finding is the collet method is extremely accurate.
I just might glue up a blank, leave part of the tube out,put it on the madrel and turn it either to 3/4 or 5/8th's.
After that I will put it in the collet and drill from the end that is "tubeless".One thing I know about CA is that it has very little shear strength.
My guess is the tube will spin free inside the blank long before I drill all the way through.
 
Eagle,
The sheer strength of CA is inversely proportional to the expectation level of the driller. (The more you WANT it to break free, the better it HOLDS). "DAMHIKT" (quote borrowed from some other pen guy!!)[:)][:)]
 
Originally posted by ed4copies
<br />Eagle,
The sheer strength of CA is inversely proportional to the expectation level of the driller. (The more you WANT it to break free, the better it HOLDS). "DAMHIKT" (quote borrowed from some other pen guy!!)[:)][:)]
Click to expand...
So from what you are saying,If I tell the tube to "stay stuck in there, see if I care!"
Do you think it will realize I am utilizing reverse psychology?
 
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