HMMM welp here we go head first into Acrylic pen blanks.  I've got 3 more blanks.  I ordered 2 of each of the blue and black pattern and a purplish pattern.  I'm hoping these are easy as pie to turn and finish as the wood barrels are.  But I dunno if I'm sure of what I'm getting myself into yet or not.  How ever I noticed a nasty nasty stench when cutting the acrylic blanks and drilling them out.  One thing I'm sure of is I was happy with how straight the drill bit went into the blanks nice and even.  So that will make for a nice barrel shape I think at least.  Yes this one will Definitely be recorded.  Now the main question I had was should I sand these with water on hand or would just regular dry sanding work?  Thanks.

 

Well this came out quite nicely easier than I had anticipated....

That is beautiful. 

It has one drawback

Did you make a mess all over your lathe and tools I sure do

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by Ron Altier

HA sadly yes.  That stuff stinks like danged garbage as well when it gets warm.  But I'll post the video after I get finished with the final editing....  I still have to buy some plastx polish though.  I don't have any of that yet LOL.

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by AndrewB

Very well done sir, another successful project!

 

This looks great...  what speed are you running?  With acrylics it's best to really crank it up  Full tilt!

Yea its not at full speed.  I still have the belt setting at the 400 to 1200 RPM adjustment, that's what I'm finding with the pen blanks, if have it going at a slower speed I find that the rougher will catch quite considerably on the blank even more so than running the lathe around 1100 RPM.  Which I do run the lathe about 1100 for pen blanks. @Jim from Easy Wood Tools I also noticed that the Ci Q2 rougher worked far better than the Negative Rake rougher, not sure why it was the oposite on this one but at the faster speeds seemed to work a lot better than the negative rake.

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by AndrewB

Next time...  try with the negative rake cutter at high speed.   I think you will really like it.  If you have 2,000 +  go for it, you'll like it.

Close enough to 2K rpm LOL  I will give it a try, actually had to re glue a tube inside of the blank and now I'm gonna have to grind off one of the tubes which happened to get stuck on my barrel cleaner bit ooooooooof.  Its okay though the 2x72 will take care of that real quick.  That should work...

 

3 hours ago, AndrewB said:

Close enough to 2K rpm LOL  I will give it a try, actually had to re glue a tube inside of the blank and now I'm gonna have to grind off one of the tubes which happened to get stuck on my barrel cleaner bit ooooooooof.  Its okay though the 2x72 will take care of that real quick.  That should work...

 

I think you'll have a good result, have fun

@Jim from Easy Wood Tools yep that worked quite a bit better actually.  Speaking of which LOL I got to order a couple of spare negative rake roughers lol but can't do that until the 1st of the month.  Either way worked quite well.

Outstanding!

 

very nice

 

Well I think I got the mixture right this time at least you don’t need a hole heck of a lot of coloring....  but I’m going to have to find something better than the 25 dollar pack of resin ha... this poor used pretty much both of the bottles up so hopefully it sets up good and I don’t have anything else to worry about... Guess I’ll have to order more.