Thread: Fruit casting

If at first you dont succeed, try again. Good luck Greg heres hoping.

I hope this lot work out for you Greg. It's a shame about your first batch. It's a great idea and worth pursueing.

I imagine turning off the blanks to recover the tubes could be a bit nasty from your description. But you've got good PPE - right ??

If I loose a tube I right it off to experience as I always have spare tubes in stock.

The second lot of fruit casting went well. They seem to be holding up well and not leaking. I cut them up and put tubes in and guess what? Forgot to paint the bloody tubes So through the clear resin is a brass tube for all to see. I will go ahead with them anyway and call them a skeleton fruit bowl pen. I think they will sell

I did another lot this afternoon to correct the last error but didn't put enough resin in - in fact ran out of it. I need to top it up with about another 150 ml of resin. I imagine resin will go on top of resin. I will get some more this week at FGI. They are the cheapest in Brisbane and are at Wacol. This time I will buy the 4kg lot as it works out a lot cheaper. Oh well - all sent to try us.

Made a mental note to paint the tubes this time. Fruit bowls are becoming only a distant interest now as I am going to focus on painted tubes. The last lot I did have worked out perfectly.

I am off the fruit casting now after 3 disasters. They look good but when you begin to turn them the resin just flies off when you get to the fruit and leaves a big hole to the tube. I have worked out a way to avoid that but it is so labour intensive that I would never get a return on the pens. The way to go is gluing the fruit to the tube and then casting. However, I get much better results on my pens by simply painting the tubes in oil paints, casting them and producing very colourful pens.