Spalted Maple Atlas

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wright_714

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Jun 14, 2010
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Moraine, Ohio
This was part of a set of very punky maple blanks, but turned out ok. 9 coats medium CA and polished to 12000 with MM. Any comments on the finish or fit would be welcomed. Still trying to perfect the finish......
 

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It looks like some ripples about where you'd grip the pen. Any ideas why? It's a great pen, and a really good piece of timber, but the ripples distract me. I don't want to blame the operator for what looks like something in the wood itself, and I'm not trying to pick apart good work. My first guess is the wood itself, and maybe the angle tha camera caught on it.
 
Nice eye Dr. It got really curly towards the nib. Some of the blanks had a lot of curl, but this one....not so much.. Thanks for the feedback.
 
At first I missed the ripples at the nib. But I think it really adds to the overall beauty of the pen. Nice pairing of kit and wood. Good job. Thanks for showing--I really like the Atlas kits.
 
Nice looking pen. Like the finish you put on it. I'm still trying to get consistent with the CA. Sometimes I get lucky, but more often not.

I'll get there some day, but that Atlas looks good.
 
ghostrider said:
Nice looking pen. Like the finish you put on it. I'm still trying to get consistent with the CA. Sometimes I get lucky, but more often not.

I'll get there some day, but that Atlas looks good.
Click to expand...

The one thing I was missing that fixed my CA consistency problems was accellerator. If you aren't using it, learn how. If you mess up, you can skew away bad spots and start over. Also, using high quality paper towels and wiping the medium back and forth a couple of times helps a lot. You can watch blobs and ripples disappear while it's still wet once the light's at the right angle. I also had to slow down and do each barrel separately instead of making just one pass. If any of this helps, cool. If you're already doing all of it, maybe post some specific questions about what's missing.
 
Drstrangefart said:
ghostrider said:
Nice looking pen. Like the finish you put on it. I'm still trying to get consistent with the CA. Sometimes I get lucky, but more often not.

I'll get there some day, but that Atlas looks good.
Click to expand...

The one thing I was missing that fixed my CA consistency problems was accellerator. If you aren't using it, learn how. If you mess up, you can skew away bad spots and start over. Also, using high quality paper towels and wiping the medium back and forth a couple of times helps a lot. You can watch blobs and ripples disappear while it's still wet once the light's at the right angle. I also had to slow down and do each barrel separately instead of making just one pass. If any of this helps, cool. If you're already doing all of it, maybe post some specific questions about what's missing.
Click to expand...
Thanks,

I'm thinking that I might be going to fast. I've noticed the problems mainly on the spalted maple.

http://www.penturners.org/forum/showthread.php?t=77964

Finally finished that one, and the other one I tried gave me the same problems (funny but I didn't notice these problems with the cherry I did last week).

Will be posting them in a few.
 
When I find ripples in the finish, I stop right there and sand length wise to remove them, then start over with my medium CA. many do not use BLO, but I find that it helps the CA flow and set faster. It seems to give me a smoother finish. Naturally YMMV.
Charles
 
The fit and finish look great from the pictures. The true test is how much you like it a week from now when you pick it back up. Spalted wood is always interesting because the grain is always unique and you never know what you'll get when it's turned down. Geat job
 
I discovered by bizarre twist of fate what causes the "ripples" in the CA. I was working on a very gnarly burl blank...got it turned, sanded, then applied my CA finish. If anyone has listened to my version of a CA finish, you'll know what I mean by "toothpaste"...but I toothpaste my blank, hold my wax paper to it and give it a couple spins with the hand wheel.
Well, it went as usual so I turned away to go fiddle with something else while it dried. Came back a few minutes later to check it by lightly touching it. All good, hard as a rock! So I crank up the lathe and grab my sand paper. I no more than touched the bottom of the blank with the paper and it stuck fast and whipped out of my hand wrapping itself around the blank.
What the hell?!?!?! It was rock solid when I checked it! How could it still be wet? So I stop the lathe and proceed to unrolling my sand paper from the blank only to notice it was stuck not to the whole blank, but the darker areas of the wood grain (curly maple) only. So I get all the CA off (wet and dry) and decide I'm going to experiment a little. I took the blank off the lathe and went inside to drop it in some boiling water. My suspicion was that the dark areas had a higher level of oil. Water and oil do not mix, so boiling water would heat up any oil inside the wood and force it to escape. I was correct!!! After less than a minute, I watched little balls of oil form on the outside of the blank....only on the dark areas!
Moral of the story...use some denatured alcohol or mineral spirits or something to dry up some of the left over oil before you apply your CA.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner
 
I agree on the denatured alcohol. I use it pretty much every time, especially with the open grains. I have had several walnut pens that have a lot of sapwood in them turn black when I apply the BLO because I didn't get all of the dust cleaned out after sanding...Thanks everyone for the feedback.
 
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