Two Imperial Pens

[TB Roye]

Hank

Looked at those kits last night they are nice, a little on the pricey side for me and my experience in turning pen right now. Do you use BLO with your CA finish or just straight CA and the Buffing them? See there is now a reason to buy another tool need some buffing wheels. Bought some Churchill Kits for $10 each and then had to spend another $54 on the stuff to turn them, what a slippery slope I am on.

Tom

[leehljp]

Hank

Looked at those kits last night they are nice, a little on the pricey side for me and my experience in turning pen right now. Do you use BLO with your CA finish or just straight CA and the Buffing them? See there is now a reason to buy another tool need some buffing wheels. Bought some Churchill Kits for $10 each and then had to spend another $54 on the stuff to turn them, what a slippery slope I am on.

Tom

The slide never stops either! Just don't tell my wife. Someone once had a signature line that said something like: "If I die, I just hope my wife doesn't sell my wood for the price I told her I paid for it".

Those kits are pricey for sure. But the couple wanted those and paid for them. I don't make that kind unless it is requested specifically. In this case, I know both of the couple's parents and they support our organization and our work here. The nice part about this one was they requested those in January and gave me to June 1 to make them, so I took my time and worked on them a little at a time over 6 weeks. I wanted them as perfect as I have ever done. I analyzed every aspect, checked size and color; checked for spots and imperfections - just to see what I could do if I was patient.

BLO and CA: Yes, I did use BLO on both. The first couple of coats of CA did not produce quite the color that I was looking for on the Amboyna. I sanded it down and ran some acetone over it; let it set for a couple of days and applied some BLO to bring the grain out and it did. I put a second coat and let it set for a couple of days and then started with CA. I did not use BLO when applying the CA.

On the ebony pen, I had about 4 or 5 coats of CA when I got a scratch on the CA - I did it with the calipers when I accidently bumped the CA. I had to sand it back down almost to the wood. There were a couple of spots that I did sand through. On the next couple of applications of CA, the sand-through spots showed a different color in bright light. So I used acetone to get ALL of the CA off. To get the color back to the right hue, I applied some BLO, did it twice.

Then for some reason on this one (the ebony) I used BLO and CA until I had about 5 thin coats. Then I went with medium coats and no BLO. Usually, I will not use BLO on oily wood but the acetone leached the color slightly and it was noticable.

As to "why" I use BLO one time and not another, It is a whim and a sensing. If things just don't feel right or seem to not be going smoothly, I change the procedure to see if something else works. For me, knowing 2 or 3 or 4 ways to accomplish the same results sure helps when one isn't going well.