My Smooth CA Finish Turned All Lumpy Bumpy
Several customers have sent in comments about their CA and lacquer finishes turning out looking like a prune a few days/weeks after they applied the finish. There are two good reasons for this occurrence.
Initially the finish comes out great and you have done a wonderful job. You put the item on a shelf in it's appropriate stand or you put it in a nice case. Two weeks later you decide to show off your beauty to an admirer and discover that the finish is very wrinkled and rough. This is caused by the wood drying out under the finish medium.
The first cause which is the most likely is that the found wood you are using was not properly dried. After you turned the wood down, the drying process was accelerated and your blank wrinkled like a prune under the CA.
The second reason which is also very likely. On a rainy nasty day, you decide to go to the shop and make a nice pen. The rain, which raises the humidity to very high levels is the culprit for the wrinkled finish. When you turn a piece of wood down very thin, it will soak up moisture out of the air very quickly and you seal that moisture in. When the humidity drops from 95% to 45%, 15% if you live in Las Vegas, or even lower inside your air conditioned house, that wood will begin to re-dry via the unsealed ends and leave you with a prune finish.
It seems that CA and lacquer finished pens are the only ones that have this problem. It took a while to figure it out but once I realized what was going on, It all made sense.
If you are purchasing dried wood, you still should let the wood acclimate to your shop for a few days before you work with it. The wood is only as dry as the air you store it in. Wood dried in a kiln in Florida and then shipped to Kansas has some more drying to do due to the difference in relative humidity. It does not take long for a pen blank to acclimate. It's like installing a hardwood floor, you never just open up the box and start installing, you're asking for buckling and cracking trouble. The same rules apply to pen making.
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What's New
We have been asked to carry refills for the Kasting Kit. We now carry a 32 ounce can of polyester resin which comes with a bottle of hardener. You do not have to buy the entire kit. The replacement can is $25.50 whereas the full kit is $34.95.
The Abranet is officially here and has been a hot item. It outlasts conventional sandpaper many many times over due to its open mesh properties. Just slap out the dust and keep on sanding again and again.
Celtic Knot Inlay Pen Blank. These blanks have all the confusing and frustrating work already done. The cutting and gluing process is finished and ready for you to cut to length and drill the hole for your special pen. The blanks are Rosewood with Maple inlay. Blank is 1"x1"x6" with the knot positioned so that it can be used for any pen kit and be centered on the barrel. They are $11.95 per blank.
PSI has released the Broadwell Art Deco to dealers so we now have two of them on our website. They are between $12.20 -$13.20
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Coming Soon
There has been a delay in the production run of our new Celtic Splendor Pen Kit. We expected them around the end of this month but the manufacturer has informed us that they need another thirty days to make technical corrections to the production run. We are very disappointed and expected to have them available to you but quality is more important than speed. We just want everything to be right.
We have the boxed rolls of aluminum oxide cloth backed sandpaper coming which include four grits; 150, 240, 320 and 400. Each roll is 1" wide and comes in a convenient pull and tear storage box. Each roll is twenty feet long. We opted not to carry the five roll set which includes a roll of 600 grit. Since the Micro-Mesh more than covers the need for the 600 we opted to save some money and pass the savings on to you. The purchase price for the set will be $10.95 which is less than half the cost of the five roll set.
We have some great new Acrylic Blank colors coming.
They were due to arrive at the end of May but there was a shipping delay so we're hoping they'll be here in late June.
We have a new specialty clip that is in production now and hope to have it late July. It's a surprise and we think you'll love it!
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