egnald
Member
Greetings all,
Yesterday I had a very disappointing blowout on a nice piece of Black and White Ebony from Laos. It was supposed to be a Jr. Gent pen I was making with my very first custom finial. After the blowout I gave up for the night and started afresh this morning, with a much easier to turn piece of wood - Bethlehem Olive Wood.
It is the first pen I have turned for a couple of months and I found it amazing at how easy it is to forget stuff. For example, After my first coat of CA I realized I had I forgot to square the blank with the tube before I turning it. Fortunately my blank cutting jig is nice and square as is my drilling jig, so even after squaring it out of sequence it still had a good fit.
Thanks to everyone that commented in my other thread about ways to turn the custom finial. After reading them, I abandoned the way I was planning on doing it and epoxied it to a 3/4-inch piece of square dowel when I was gluing the tubes in. First I tried mounting it to a bottle stopper chuck, but the Poplar dowel was just too soft to hold a solid thread for turning, so I chucked it up in my blank drilling jaws to turn it. It stands a little more proud of the cap than I would like, but since I had no experience I wanted to make sure I didn't part it off too short either. The finish is not quite as smooth as the rest of the pen, but as careful as I was by using only the last 4 Micromesh pads I still sanded through on the radius. After the redo I was a little too cautious and didn't Micromesh quite enough. Still, I don't think it is too bad for my maiden go. Experience is a great teacher so I'm sure the next one will be better.
Here it is - Dave
Yesterday I had a very disappointing blowout on a nice piece of Black and White Ebony from Laos. It was supposed to be a Jr. Gent pen I was making with my very first custom finial. After the blowout I gave up for the night and started afresh this morning, with a much easier to turn piece of wood - Bethlehem Olive Wood.
It is the first pen I have turned for a couple of months and I found it amazing at how easy it is to forget stuff. For example, After my first coat of CA I realized I had I forgot to square the blank with the tube before I turning it. Fortunately my blank cutting jig is nice and square as is my drilling jig, so even after squaring it out of sequence it still had a good fit.
Thanks to everyone that commented in my other thread about ways to turn the custom finial. After reading them, I abandoned the way I was planning on doing it and epoxied it to a 3/4-inch piece of square dowel when I was gluing the tubes in. First I tried mounting it to a bottle stopper chuck, but the Poplar dowel was just too soft to hold a solid thread for turning, so I chucked it up in my blank drilling jaws to turn it. It stands a little more proud of the cap than I would like, but since I had no experience I wanted to make sure I didn't part it off too short either. The finish is not quite as smooth as the rest of the pen, but as careful as I was by using only the last 4 Micromesh pads I still sanded through on the radius. After the redo I was a little too cautious and didn't Micromesh quite enough. Still, I don't think it is too bad for my maiden go. Experience is a great teacher so I'm sure the next one will be better.
Here it is - Dave
