Thread: Playing with resin at Artme's place

Ok here is the block of white pearlex cast without pressure and the pine cones and banksia cast under pressure with red pigment and gold dust

casts.jpg new blanks.jpg

We tried turning a banksia for a Sierra but the resin infill looked like brown and boring . Next we turned a Cigar with the pinecones and they looked better with red and gold fleck, but someone got the bushes back to front , so we never finished them.Next was working on the 30 JR Gents Arthur is making for a school reunion. The plan was for a cap with the school emblem on the caps, then a white with red/green stripe (school's colours) and some reunion text (class of .. etc) on the main part. He decided to turn the cast pen blanks down and then stick on the transfers before finished with a CA coating. The casts we did were for spares as he did not have enough.

Well he had already turned and finished most of the blanks beautifully, but the cap ends were unfortunately over sized instead of undersized , and the main parts sized to the bushings instead of undersized . So to save work, plus the text probably wasn't going to look good anyway, he decided to leave the main parts as is (ie no need for CA finish). A few rejects (chips/cracks/colour smears etc) however meant we did have to turn a few extras. So we then started by re-sanding all the cap ends to be undersized relative to the bushes to allow a CA coating.

micromeshing.jpg

Arthur then went and sealed the transfers he had got printed at a local company and applied them to the correctly sized cap blanks. Unfortunately then, when we went to apply the CA coating, the labels begun to dissolve . We tried then to spray a floor finish lacquer as a finish, but apart from very thin and wanting to run, it didn't provide a good finish. We then tried some NCL that worked pretty well, really popping the colours, with my airbrush kit. So while I did the spraying Arthur assembled the main parts.

nitro spraying.jpg assembly.jpg

Arthur did assemble one of the pens completely just to see how it looked, but the cap parts needed the NCL to get hard, so the remaining 29 pens will have to wait until Arthur comes back from a trip to Bris. I also showed Arthur how to make a pen blank rack to let them dry.

pen2.jpg pen1.jpg pen3.jpg pen caps.jpg

We also spent a lot of time on a bowl, but we will post some pics of that in the wood turning forums when I hopefully get some decent pics tomorrow.Cheers

3:20 and Neil has just left for Bundy.

I have learned so much over the last few days that my head is still swimming!!

I had actually forgotten some turning skills due to the NPH I had last year and was developing some bad habits , so to have Neil here was just tremendous.

Casting, turning, finishing tool sharpening with the CBN - all great experience and some good laughs along the way.

Many thanks to Neil. I owe him real debt of gratitude.

Thanks mate!!bravabravabrava

Aww....I was hoping for pics of Artme sealed in resin ala Han Solo

Originally Posted by RedShirtGuy

Aww....I was hoping for pics of Artme sealed in resin ala Han Solo

Nah not Arthur, but there are a few others that come to mind

Great work lads.

Cheers
Tony