Failed Experiment - Cloth Casting

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
DurocShark

DurocShark

Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
3,622
Location
Anaheim, CA
I've got a bunch of old hawaiian print shirts that are in various states of disrepair. In the back of my head I've been thinking that I could pen-itize them. I didn't want to sleeve a tube though.

I soaked some cut up strips in weakly catalyzed PR (3 drops per ounce... Enough to get it to gel up) and stuffed them in a pipe mold. They cured in the toaster oven for a few hours and came out looking really good.

So I drilled a piece and started to turn it. The material made the blank weak and it snapped at a piece of cloth. I know there are voids... The joys of trying something like this without pressure. I had figured on filling them with thick CA or something.

Anyway, I have a question... Anybody else tried something like this? I can wrap and cast tubes all day long, but this seems different. Would pressure harden the PR in the cloth fibers where just soaking and wringing the material didn't?

Obligatory pic:
hawaiianshirt.jpg
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
I had a request for a pen with the new Navy blue camo on the top barrel. It was a failure when I cast it in pvc pipe. I read the Bubble free casting tutorial and did it that way. Turned out ok but the colors arent as good as I had hoped. I soaked the tubes in pr first then cast. I may get some waterproofing spray and try it again to see if the colors dont get dark when wet. The guy bought the pen but I thought it could be better. I glued the cloth with ca.
 

Attachments

  • camopen 014.jpg
    camopen 014.jpg
    17.2 KB · Views: 242
  • camopen 033.jpg
    camopen 033.jpg
    34.7 KB · Views: 224
Last edited:
well Don... I don't look at this as a failure. you tried something, something new, something that none of use have done, and to top it off you learned something. look on the bright side, the next time might not yeald a pen ether, but your having a lot of fun trying. :)
 
For this type of blank pressure will help ALOT. This is how I have done it. Get a piece of 6" 3/16 or 1/4 dowell and sand it really smooth. Take the fabric and loosly roll it onto the piece of dowell then put it into the tube you are using as a mold, the tube should be longer that the blank so it creates a reservoir on top to hold the resin as it flows into the fabric. Make a base for the tube so that the tube stands upright. Now pull out the dowell (pull it slowly and turn it slightly as you pull, sanding it earlier should take off any splinters that may hook on to the fabric). This will leave a hole in the middle of the rolled fabric and allow the resin to flow in there and allows for better soaking. Then stick it into the pot and presureize it. the only downside with cating fabric is that what you see when you put it in the pot may not be what you get bec (in my experience) most fabrics change color once they make contact with the resin and reds & blues tend to bleed into the resin. Hope this helps, Eugene.
 
Thanks Eugene. That's what I suspected. Good idea on the dowel forming the hole... But you're not soaking the material first?
 
You could improvise a small pot with PVC pipe and use a bycycle pump to pressurize it. I would not use more that 30-40 psi but that should be enough to get you there.
 
Gin N' Tonic said:
Don't laugh, I used this method to make many blanks before I bought a pressure pot.
Click to expand...

My reaction wasn't to laugh, it was to cringe. There's a very valid reason you shouldn't use PVC in pressurized air lines- the failure mode is seriously dangerous with flying pieces of sharp shrapnel.

Pressurized water is different because water's uncompressable.
 
I think part of your problem is like said above, you need to saturate the fabric in the pr so it soaks in. This should help strengthen the blank. My other thoughts are the heat to cure it. Too much heat makes pr brittle. I would suggest letting it cure over night and not try to rush it. Good luck. I like what you have going and cant wait to see the finished pen.
 
jason_r said:
My reaction wasn't to laugh, it was to cringe. There's a very valid reason you shouldn't use PVC in pressurized air lines- the failure mode is seriously dangerous with flying pieces of sharp shrapnel.

Pressurized water is different because water's uncompressable.
Click to expand...

You're right.

I double checked what I'm using and it is a special type of stuff made for air lines.<EDIT IN> It's a type of HDPE but it's expensive. I got it because it was leftover from a friend of mine who did some air lines for a factory <EDIT IN> What I had originally used was black ABS pipe but when I found this other stuff I stopped using the ABS.

While PVC might work in the short run at low pressure I would have to agree with Jason that it does have a big downside. The main drawback with PVC is that it's brittle and can shatter if it's old or exposed to too much sunlight, or impacted.
 
Last edited:
I cast denim and other cloth by cutting pieces about 1.25" square, give them a quick soak in a weak PR mix. Then stuff them one at a time in 1" pieces of PVC pipe. Mix my PR and pour it in the pipe and use the pressure pot to pull a vacuum. I get about 90% plus good ones. Make the PVC pipe molds a little extra long, about an inch to allow more PR to be poured into it, when the vacuum is pulled the level will fall. I gave up on anything less than 1", the failure rate was about 50 /50. The larger the pipe the better the cast.
 
oh, crap!

My coworker looked over my shoulder when I had that original pic up on my screen. He asked if I was shopping for dildos!

:eek::eek::eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom