Up until now, I've been working exclusively in wood. My primary materials have been the paduak and rosewood blanks that came in my starter kit. On occasion I got to use other woods, like walnut.
Yesterday I realized that I was about out of these pre-drilled blanks, so I laid out all my materials and pen kits that I had and set to work organizing them and matching them up. The first pen I worked, because I was so excited to NOT to be doing slimlines anymore, was a Big Ben "Cigar" style pen.
I wanted to do something completely different than what I had been doing, so I chose to turn the pen in "blackwood." I'm fairly certain that when I placed the order it was for "Ebony" but this is what they sent me, and it's clearly labeled "blackwood." Anyways, this pen was a BLAST to turn. The wood cut smooth and there was no chip out or tearing. It took a nice shine when finished with my shellawax, and assembled smoothly. The pen has a great weight to it, and looks intimidating.
Feeling rather high and my success, I decided to make an attempt at working with acrylic. My first pen would be from a blank called "fire feathers." It was a red and white pearl swirly pattern. I matched it with a basic comfort grip pen. Initially, I had planned on not using the grip since it was black and I didn't think it would match well with the acrylic.
No sooner had I made this decision did I start learning that acrylic has a mind of it's own. First, while drilling the center whole in each blank, I had to be careful to drill very slowly. I only had the pointy type drill bit, so when I finally made it all the way through, the end of the blank blew out slightly. Fortunately, I had made the blanks slightly longer than I needed them, so this wasn't a big deal. Turns out though, that acrylic blows out at the slightest inkling of warmth.
When I went to square the ends, I had a massive blow out that went 1/4 of an inch down the blank, all the way to the brass tube I had glued into the center. At this point I realized that I had no choice but to use the rubber grip. I wasn't sure at first how to go about trimming the blank down to the new size it would need to be to accommodate, so I removed the brass tube and did a little research. Turns out the method that was called for required me to reinsert the brass tube and then turn the blank all the way down to the brass tube, just enough so that the I could slide the grip over the tube.
Well, when I went to glue the brass tube back inside the blank, I messed up. The CA (super glue) started drying before I had the tube all the way into the blank. I panicked, and overcompensated, so now the blank was sticking out too far on one end. I tried to shove it back in, but ended up cutting it too short. So when I went to assembled the pen together, the grip was a little squished and the pen nib stuck out past the tip of the pen, even when fully retracted.
Turning this pen was a beast too. Even with my tool precisely sharpened, it chipped and tore frequently. After I realized that it was the heat that was causing the chipping, I switched to my smooth skew chisel. It was very slow going, as I had to keep stopping and switching which blank I was working on every few minutes to prevent it from heating up. Once I managed to get past the painfully slow, painfully delicate, and extremely stinky turning and chiseling, the finishing was rather easy. After sanding with regular sandpaper to 400ish grit, I switched to micromesh and wet sanded, and then finished with some plastic polish. I'll post a picture of the finished result next week.
Stay tuned for part 2, tomorrow!
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