sorcerertd
Member
I'm not 100% happy with these, but here they are. I ran into some issues. The end products are good, but not great. The blanks came from Stadium Blanks, both the watch parts cap and the barrels that have chipped red seat material cast in blue and white. The "Jr." is a Diamond Knurl in chrome. The finish is 3 few layers of GluBoost Med, and a couple more of thin, polished through the Zona grits and buffed with Maguire's.
The sierra style is a stainless steel Monarch that worked well for the other half of the stadium blank. It needed something, so I printed out the decal, let it dry overnight, hit it with some Krylon triple thick glaze and let it dry out for another night before placing it. It laid out nicely, but didn't hold up as far as the print quality, during application. I CA'd it, wet sanded through the first 3 grits of Zona paper, applied the decal, let it sit overnight, then finished it the same way as the other pen.
The issues:
The sierra style is a stainless steel Monarch that worked well for the other half of the stadium blank. It needed something, so I printed out the decal, let it dry overnight, hit it with some Krylon triple thick glaze and let it dry out for another night before placing it. It laid out nicely, but didn't hold up as far as the print quality, during application. I CA'd it, wet sanded through the first 3 grits of Zona paper, applied the decal, let it sit overnight, then finished it the same way as the other pen.
The issues:
- The hands on the watch parts blank look nice, BUT I did not think about the fact that I couldn't turn it down to the typical diameter I would have for this kit. I nicked the hands a little and had to build that up again with CA. With the cap barrel being fatter, I can't make with a normal fit, but I did at least taper the top of it to match up with the finial angle.
- There is some cloudiness between 4 and 5 on the watch face that would appear to be CA from the blank set up before it was cast. I'm not thrilled with that.
- The blanks used on the barrels had a lot of bubbles in them, some being pretty good sized. The tiny ones are harder to fill in, though.
- The shredded plastic of the seats chipped out in a couple places on the barrel ends. That was a pain to try to fill with the shavings.
- The decal didn't come out very well. I'm just gonna say it has a rugged look (It's a feature!). The seam is at least tucked nicely under the clip.
- There is a nick on the finial of the Monarch where I dropped it. Dang it. It adds to the ruggedness of the decal, right?
I might try to buff it out since it's solid stainless instead of plating, but past experience has told me to leave well enough alone. Oh, but it will be fine this time...
