Question for Polarbear

[Blind_Squirrel]

I have been casting pens a long time, and recently I intentionally left off any plug in the hole, and actually filled the tube with resin. I ran a q-tip with petroleum jelly through the tube first. When the casting was done the center slide right out, looks like a glass rod. I have done this a few times some without coating the tubes, because the resin n the tube shrinks it seems to come right out ?

I didn't want to hijack the other thread, so I started a new one.

How do you center/suspend the tube with this technique? Do you happen to have any pics of this technique?

 

[polarbear1]

The recent ones I used a 7 MM tube and made castings for the round top euro pen. The top half of the pen was a regular pen blank, I drilled the end of the pen blank, then sliced off a a few thin slices, slid the slices on both ends of my casting tube to suspend it. The casting end of the pen looks like a segmented pen with rings on each side that match the rest of the pen. Or in some cases I buy the 10 inch 7mm tubes cut them extra long and use any scrap acrylic to suspend the tube. This avoids the need for the matching ring on both ends.

 

[Blind_Squirrel]

Thanks!