Made a new rollerball pen yesterday and finished it today. I wanted to try the CA finish again and so I dug out my instructions again and followed them to the letter. This finish turned out really well.
It has a plastic finish that shows the colours in the wood really well. This is the first time I have ever used Chechen wood. When I finished turning (before I sanded, I was thinking that this was really boring as far as wood goes. Once I started the sanding though, I was amazed at how much better it looked. In my LED lights on the lathe there are bits of gold in this wood that seemed to glow. There is also some green that doesn’t quite show up in the photos.
In terms of the CA finish, there are 6 coats and the key is to put it on smoothly and then DON’T RUSH the drying. I left at least a half hour between coats. I’m sure it didn’t take that long to dry between coats, but I didn’t put the next coat on until the previous one was dry (not at all tacky even). The instructions that I got also said to leave the blank dry overnight and so I did. That gave the final coat a chance to really cure hard.
The final thing I did was get a plastic polish from Canadian Tire called PlastX (made by Meguiars). This made the finish really shine. All in all I think I have finally figured out the “recipe” to get a good CA finish. I think it will be helpful to get one or two more mandrels so that I can continue turning while waiting for one to dry.
To Everything, Turn...Turn...Turn 