Richard Gillespie
01-15-2006, 9:41 AM
Shop was nice and warm, was bored with nothing else that needed doing (yeah, right). Had some wood scraps previously cut to 5/8" square or so. Set up the band saw to cut 2-3/16" pieces and went to town. The drill press already had a 7mm brad point bit chucked up. Drilled all the blanks. Now I only have 11 pen kits on hand and have enough pen blanks cut and drilled for 43 pens. Glued up the tubes on hand with polyurethane glue and set them up to dry.
Tried to do a better job with the polyurethane glue. Had a Black Walnut blank blow up on the lathe on the last batch. I was using 120 grit sandpaper to score the tubes and putting glue on the end of the tube. This was then inserted into the blank with a twisting motion. On closer examination, the glue only traveled 2/3's the way down the blank. :mad:
Experimented with wetting the blanks with water prior to insertion of the tubes. Won't do that again. The grain on the Black Walnut and to a lessor degree, Cherry and Ash swelled so much it required extra effort to insert the tubes. I did however, put glue on the tubes inserted it halfway and removed it. I then put additional glue on and inserted it all the way into the other end of the blank. We'll see how well this works out. If I again have problems I'll go to epoxy and change methods.:eek:
Meantime, the temperature both in and outside the shop was dropping like a rock. The winds are bringing old man winter back into town. Looks like it will be a while before I'll be getting back into the shop to do anything else. Time to look at the catalogs and see what's going to cost me more money. The really disgusting part is my wife and I spent Friday removing the leaves from the back of the house. Now it doesn't look like we've touched it. Have I told you I hate winter.
Tried to do a better job with the polyurethane glue. Had a Black Walnut blank blow up on the lathe on the last batch. I was using 120 grit sandpaper to score the tubes and putting glue on the end of the tube. This was then inserted into the blank with a twisting motion. On closer examination, the glue only traveled 2/3's the way down the blank. :mad:
Experimented with wetting the blanks with water prior to insertion of the tubes. Won't do that again. The grain on the Black Walnut and to a lessor degree, Cherry and Ash swelled so much it required extra effort to insert the tubes. I did however, put glue on the tubes inserted it halfway and removed it. I then put additional glue on and inserted it all the way into the other end of the blank. We'll see how well this works out. If I again have problems I'll go to epoxy and change methods.:eek:
Meantime, the temperature both in and outside the shop was dropping like a rock. The winds are bringing old man winter back into town. Looks like it will be a while before I'll be getting back into the shop to do anything else. Time to look at the catalogs and see what's going to cost me more money. The really disgusting part is my wife and I spent Friday removing the leaves from the back of the house. Now it doesn't look like we've touched it. Have I told you I hate winter.