Acrylic Pen Blanks Coming Loose

[Virgil Jordan]

I'm in need of a little help with turning Acrylic.

I've tried turning two blanks that were painted inside with Folkart acrylic paint bought at Wal~Mart. The blanks were glued with five minute epoxy. I let the paint dry overnight before glueing.

In both cases the blank turned fine, but when I started sanding the blank spun loose from the tube. Since I've never had this problem before with epoxy glue I'm 99% convinced that the problem is the paint not adhering to the Acrylic.

What type of paint should I be using? Any particular brand that works best?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Jonathon Spafford]

I have never experienced this, but my initial thought would be is that you are debonding the glue because of friction heat from sanding! Heat isn't good for the wood anyway so you might try sanding at a slower speed and being less agressive... this is really all I can think of at the moment!

[David Beeler]

I'm not sure why you are painting the inside of the blank, if it is to keep the tube from showing through I use a magic marker type pen closest in color to the acrylic blank to coat the tube after it has been roughed up for gluing. I then use gorilla glue for the gluing being sure to coating the inside of the blank with water. I have had no problems with acrylic blanks using this method.

[RL Johnson]

I believe that David is on the right track. It sounds like a failure in the acrylic coating that you are painting on. I too like the magic markers and if the glue soften the coating, it is not thick enough to matter. I also like Gorilla glue for large tubes.
One thing I found about acrylic blanks is that you cannot be as agressive as you can with wood. Best of luck.

[Stan Cook]

I'm not sure why you are painting the inside of the blank,

Painting the inside of the tube keeps the glue from showing through. If you look closely, you will be able to see glue and bubbles through the finished pen if the inside of the tube is not painted.

[Virgil Jordan]

Thanks for all the advise.

I'm painting the blanks because I've had a couple of ruined pens where the tube or the glue bubbles showed through the blanks.

I tried a different paint and that seems to have solved the problem. I switched to Krylon Fusion. It's made to paint plastic and it bonds very well to the blanks. It doesn't come in many colors, but so far I'm having good luck with white, off white, gold, and silver.

Ive turned ten pens in the last two days and all of them came out fine.