Thread: Stupid question

Acrylic blanks are often polyester resin, so not sure what you mean. Are you after a wood/polyester resin blank (ie worthless wood type thing) or something cast in resin etc?

When turning my first few poly resin pens (from Timberbits.com) I found that they tended to be a lot more brittle than the acrylics. Turns out I was turning on a way too alow spindle speed. Use fast speed (2000 rpm), sharp tools, and let the tool and the speed do all the work - do not put much pressure while turning.

This was my experience anyway. Simon.

i ALWAYS tell my workers "there is only 1 STUPID question..... the one you don't ask" that being said i agree pretty much with Bassmansimon

i crank the lathe up flat out, turn with a freshly sharpened skew and let the cutting edge do all the work, meaning don't put a lot of pressure on the tool

i have tried these new fancy carbide tipped tools and i still reckon the good old skew does it best

you can hear from the sound of the tool cutting the blank when its doing the right thing, if you start to hear it chipping the blank, then pull back on the pressure and take a number of very light cuts over the effected area to clean up the chips

just my 2cents

all the best

MIK

I prefer the Woodchuck Pro but acrylic blanks are very easy to chip if you rush the job. Sandpaper seems to fix the problem of small chips.

I too am not sure what you are looking for in they way of acrylic blanks but there are several different types. I have not tried the Timberbits type of blank in a very long tome but unless they have changed yes they do seem more brittle than some others. There are Aussie Blanks which I think are made from polyester resin I think ? and they are similar to the type of blank we can make ourselves. I have also used blanks from GPW and 043turning and I believe they are a little softer and appear to me to be less brittle. There are also acrylic blanks that are available through 043 that come from the UK and while they appear to be very brittle but if you can get past that they really do come up well.
The worthless wood style blanks can be great to make and also very tricky to turn.
Ian the snake man (Nai84) has been doing some great work in the way of that type of blank and I have found with the couple I have done there is a few things that you must do and when it come to turning sometimes things can go wrong

With any of the acrylic type of turning as the others have said sharp tools are a must. I personally use the carbide cutters and enjoy using them but that mainly come down to the fact I couldn't sharpen the normal tool but I am getting better at it but still prefer carbide for now.

Cheers ian