Do you use micromesh?
Micromesh alone should be shinier than what I think I am seeing in your photo. Are you stopping the lathe and sanding end to end as you rotate the spindle between each grit? Also, are you wiping of the previous grit before going to the next?
The pen should look really good when you have gone through the MM. I hit it with Meguiar's Ultimate Polish just because I am OCD when it comes to pens.
I hope that helps.
Harry
White diamond on a buffing wheel... Best thing I've seen yet. But it won't fix everything if you have issues in the earlier steps.
You say sharpen 5 times.. Tell us more - what tool, speed,etc. the only thing that dulls that fast for me is some of the trustones. An acrylic should to be that bad.
When I'm done turning an acrylic, I do the final shaping/smoothing with sandpaper, starting with 150 grit. I turn the lathe off after using each grit, and sand lengthwise before going to the next higher grit. I stop sanding at 600 grit.
Then I use a firm buffing wheel, and red rouge around 1800 rpms on the drill press, and then switch to a softer white buffing pad, and finish with white compound. The acrylics come out shining like new money!
You can get the buffing mandrels for a drill press at lowes, or just about any hardware store. I like them a lot since I can buff at a slower speed. They are cheap, and very easy to use. Just chuck'em up in the drill press, and fire away...
White diamond on a buffing wheel... Best thing I've seen yet. But it won't fix everything if you have issues in the earlier steps.
You say sharpen 5 times.. Tell us more - what tool, speed,etc. the only thing that dulls that fast for me is some of the trustones. An acrylic should to be that bad.
Alpha, I'm relatively new at this. Started with a small roughing gouge and found out the lower speed.. meaning around 750 rpm was not nearly enough and 1100 didn't seem to do much either. I ended up using a roughing gouge and skew at 2200 rpm. The chisels that I have are from Harbor Freight and are an HSS set. I've gotten fairly good at sharpening with my wet grinder and Tormek jig. I can get through wood about 15 times faster. What I don't know is what kind of blank this was. I swear it was acrylic. Does PB sound correct?
Paul,
I have attached a picture of 5 (just finished 4 of them yesterday) bullet pens with camo acrylics. My pic is a little blurry, but the blanks shine like glass after buffing. The only two that the tubes have been painted, are the urban and desert camo.
You could probably buy everything you need (if you wanted to try it on a drill press) for around $30-$35, and use it for anything else you may need to buff. Two pads, and two sticks of compound last me a long time.