Big Shed
15th September 2010, 10:52 PM
Decided to play with some WW casting, using PR (not rich enough for PU), using some of the off-cuts from the block of Brown Mallee I got as present the other day.
The Cigar Americana is quite slim, and short, FP which really has to have the cap posted be write with. It uses the normal 10mm Cigar tubes, but somewhat shorter.
The OD of the cap fittings is 12.6mm, leaving a wall thickness of 1.3mm min on the blank, but the lower barrel fittings are 11.4mm OD, leaving a wall thickness of 0.7mm.
Let me tell you this is not the best pen to try your first WW blank on!
Cap went fine, but the lower barrel was another story, was almost there and a large chunk of resin and Mallee burl flew off. As the cap looked rather speccy, and it was the only blank I had, I decided to look for the bits and see whether I could put Humpty back together again. Well, almost. Some smaller bits were missing, but really too big to "fudge" with CA and shavings/dust.
The I remembered that some time ago I had bought 4 ResinSaver moulds from Charlie and decided to give the Cigar one a try. The lower barrel tube was just a tad shorter than the cap tube on a normal Cigar.
Glued as much as I could back on the tube, mixed 2 more lots of clear resin and Pearlex, put the tube in the mould and poured the 2 colours.
This was late in the day and with all the trouble my brain didn't work too well. Put the mould, as well as a Sierra one, in the pressure pot and put my normal pressure in (70 psi).
As I was was laying in bed that night, a little light went on the dark brain cavity, oh no, should have only used about 20 psi, or no pressure at all!:doh:
Anyway in the morning took them out, and you guessed it, quite a bit of resin in the tubes:o
Drilled the resin out, re-turned the blank and you couldn't see it had been repaired.:2tsup:
Will put the end result in another thread.
One drawback of the ResinSaver mould is that they are set up to do pairs of tubes, even for the Sierra, so even if you only want one, you're doing 2 because of the low connection between the 2 cavities.
No biggie, but if I ever make one of these myself, I will do the same as I saw another bloke on another forum do in the last few days, make individual cavities. Oh and his cavities were square as well, saving a bit more resin and a bit less resin to be turned off.
The pink mould is the Sierra, the other the Cigar, nifty idea these. I will be using them a lot more, now that I have broken the ice!
The Cigar Americana is quite slim, and short, FP which really has to have the cap posted be write with. It uses the normal 10mm Cigar tubes, but somewhat shorter.
The OD of the cap fittings is 12.6mm, leaving a wall thickness of 1.3mm min on the blank, but the lower barrel fittings are 11.4mm OD, leaving a wall thickness of 0.7mm.
Let me tell you this is not the best pen to try your first WW blank on!
Cap went fine, but the lower barrel was another story, was almost there and a large chunk of resin and Mallee burl flew off. As the cap looked rather speccy, and it was the only blank I had, I decided to look for the bits and see whether I could put Humpty back together again. Well, almost. Some smaller bits were missing, but really too big to "fudge" with CA and shavings/dust.
The I remembered that some time ago I had bought 4 ResinSaver moulds from Charlie and decided to give the Cigar one a try. The lower barrel tube was just a tad shorter than the cap tube on a normal Cigar.
Glued as much as I could back on the tube, mixed 2 more lots of clear resin and Pearlex, put the tube in the mould and poured the 2 colours.
This was late in the day and with all the trouble my brain didn't work too well. Put the mould, as well as a Sierra one, in the pressure pot and put my normal pressure in (70 psi).
As I was was laying in bed that night, a little light went on the dark brain cavity, oh no, should have only used about 20 psi, or no pressure at all!:doh:
Anyway in the morning took them out, and you guessed it, quite a bit of resin in the tubes:o
Drilled the resin out, re-turned the blank and you couldn't see it had been repaired.:2tsup:
Will put the end result in another thread.
One drawback of the ResinSaver mould is that they are set up to do pairs of tubes, even for the Sierra, so even if you only want one, you're doing 2 because of the low connection between the 2 cavities.
No biggie, but if I ever make one of these myself, I will do the same as I saw another bloke on another forum do in the last few days, make individual cavities. Oh and his cavities were square as well, saving a bit more resin and a bit less resin to be turned off.
The pink mould is the Sierra, the other the Cigar, nifty idea these. I will be using them a lot more, now that I have broken the ice!