Another corian pen question

[Steve Mellott]

Have any of you tried to turn a pen out of thin corian glue ups? I'd like to turn a pen that has either 1/8" or 1/4" stripes in it, but corian comes in 1/2" thickness. Any ideas on how to get from 1/2" to 1/8" leaving a surface that can be glued to another? Thanks.

Steve

[Hal Taft]

Steve,
I used to fabricate corian, and it mills fairly easily with carbide cutters of most sorts. Depending on what tooling you have available, and how many multiples you want to set up for, I'd glue two contrasting pieces together in widths multiples of your blank width plus kerfs, hot glue to a piece of wood for handling, and joint/rout/saw down the outer piece to desired thickness, then glue on another thickness of the next color. Just curious, what are you glueing with ? When I was working with corian, my experience was that almost nothing but their proprietary adhesive would stick to it well.

[Steve Mellott]

Hal:

I bought some corian from the company that provides the red/white/blue corian for the Freedom Pens. I also bought the glue they sell which is intended for corian.

I like the idea of gluing the corian to wood to get a larger mass. Do you think the corian will hurt my saw blades and router bits?

Thanks.

Steve

[Hal Taft]

Corian, to the best of my knowledge, has been slowly evolving to meet building codes, the needs of fabricators, and the taste of the marketplace, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. When I was working with it, it was almost entirely a plastic material, with negligeable abrasive content, that machined magnificently with carbide saw blades and router bits, and took a polish very well. Cutters and blades dulled maybe a little faster than with tough woods. You could heat it and bend it if desired, but if it was cold, it could be a little brittle. If routing or turning it, you'll want to take light cuts, and keep your tools sharp. Have fun, post pictures.

Hal

[Greg Just]

I made a bottle stopper last year with multiple pieces of corian glued up with CA glue. Worked well.

[M Toupin]

Corian cuts fine with any carbide blade or router bit and won't hurt it any more than any of the very hard woods like Ipe or the like. HSS Turning tools work well in the lathe, I find a scrapper works as well as any. The Corian glue is expensive, CA glue works just as well IMO and it's a lot cheaper. Best way I've found to make thin strips is to rip it on the BS and sand it with a drum/widebelt sander.

Mike

[Chris Stolicky]

I have made many pens using corian, using both single thickness (1/2") and double thickness (1"). When ever I have doubled it up, I simply used medium CA, covered both smooth sides of the corian, rubbed them together quickly to ensure full coverage, and then clamped them together.

I also recently made a segmented pen using both wood and corian. For the corian-wood interface in that pen I used gorilla glue.

Here are links to a double-thickness pen and the segmented pen mentioned. I have never pasted links into a post so I'm not sure how well this will work. If it doesn't work I can send them to you if like.

http://www.penturners.org/photos/images/5036/1_Capture_00050.JPG
http://www.penturners.org/photos/images/5036/1_Capture_00032.JPG


Good luck.

[Steve Mellott]

Chris:

The links worked well! How did you cut the small pieces and (more importantly) how did you get a glue line surface on the cut pieces? Thanks.

Steve

[Chris Stolicky]

Chris:

The links worked well! How did you cut the small pieces and (more importantly) how did you get a glue line surface on the cut pieces? Thanks.

Steve

I have a small 10" band saw that I used to cut the pieces. I then turned to manual labor by sanding the ends of the pieces on 120 grit sandpaper on top of a granite tile. It is a lot of work, but its really the only way I can get a good glue line.

[Steve Mellott]

Chris:

Thanks for the explanation.

[Chris Stolicky]

Chris:

Thanks for the explanation.

No problem.

I should note that I used yellow glue (Titebond 1) for the wood to wood pieces. No particular reason other than that's what I have read others doing for larger glue-ups and it is 'wood' glue.

When you whip something up post it here. (although I'm bad at not doing that - need to work on it)

[Bill Dunn jr]

Hi Steve,

I use small pieces of Corian as accent pieces in some of my pens. I first cut the piece close to the size I need on the bandsaw. The I hot glue it to the squared off end of a block of wood. I leave the ends overhang the wood so I can glue in the inside corners and the piece is right against the wood. I keep the bottom flush with the wood for the next step. I take the wood with the Corian on the end to my disc sander and, using the miter gauge set at 90 degrees, run it aginst the wheel until it is the desired thickness. This has worked well for me. I use CA glue for Corian. I tried polyurethane glue but had it come apart on the lathe. I have included a couple pictures to show how they turned out. Sorry about the quality.

I'd be curious as to how yours turns out.

[Dean Thomas]

Steve,

Couple of thoughts on Corian glue-ups. Caveat: ONE MAN'S EXPERIENCE!!! Not necessarily "the" way.

Corian normally comes with one good side and one that's pretty darned good, just not completely smoothed. If a body glues the two smooth sides together, one gets a dandy bond. If that body then does a couple of strokes on 400 grit paper and a couple more on 600 grit, one has another dandy glue surface. Now, depending on what you want to do exactly, you can band saw your glue up and if you're careful, you can split the middles of the 1/2" Corian layers to achieve even layers. You can't get even 1/4" layers, obviously (darn), but you CAN end up with a full 1/4" layer as well as a 1/8" layer.

Doing this also gives you thicker chunks to play with, safer to work with over all. It gets to be a sacrificial thing. Being the stingy guy that I am, I HATE to waste the stuff. I want to use it all and of course, I can't really. Just won't work.

Clean cuts with your saws and a little judicial abrasion and you can build layers pretty easily. With jigs, you can build diagonal stacks, too, that make a pretty nifty pen or feature.

[Ben Gastfriend]

I had a local woodworker tell me that he used his surface planer to reduce corian to 3/16" to use it for inlay work, and he didn't note any adverse effects. Let us know how you do.

[Chris Stolicky]

I had a local woodworker tell me that he used his surface planer to reduce corian to 3/16" to use it for inlay work, and he didn't note any adverse effects. Let us know how you do.

Man, if don't have carbide blades (or cutter heads) you will dull them in a hurry! Otherwise, I'm sure it would work well.

[Keith Outten]

I resaw Corian on my band saw then run the pieces through my drum sander.
.