That a beauty Woody, have you tried brass and copper swarf?
Now let me see, in my machine shop I have brass shaving, mild steel shaving, stainless steel shaving, alumimium shaving, GOLD shaving, which should I used to try out.
Hi Mark
Peter is sending me one with brass not sure about copper it would have to go on a copper kit so it would be a bit restricted but Peter is the main man in this as it is all his idea and he is the one making them without him none of this would have happened he is the Maestro on this one so I owe him a bloody great big thank you for the privilege of turning another one of his beautiful brainwave blanks, there are so many talented people on this forum and I have had some extraordinary blanks sent to me that these guys have made I wouldn't have a scooby were to start casting blanks
And again a big thank you to every one who has commented on this post form Peter the main man and myself
Woody very nice pen with a very well matched pen kit.
Peter, can briefly described how you make the blanks cos I have tons of shaving in my shop.
Now let me see, in my machine shop I have brass shaving, mild steel shaving, stainless steel shaving, alumimium shaving, GOLD shaving, which should I used to try out.
Woody very nice pen with a very well matched pen kit.
Peter, can briefly described how you make the blanks cos I have tons of shaving in my shop.
Now let me see, in my machine shop I have brass shaving, mild steel shaving, stainless steel shaving, alumimium shaving, GOLD shaving, which should I used to try out.
Peter you have already had more success than me.
I tried this some years ago when I was working with plastics, a different material, I used copper.
I found as you have said the copper simply tore its way out of the plastic.
I ended up painting the brass tube and sliding the copper shaving down inside a clear acrylic tube.
The recipient was happy but I wasn't.
Good luck with your venture, they sure look good so far.
Oh yeah I have a couple rolls of silver flat wire I had forgotten about.
Wonder what I could do with that init?
Sorry I forgot to answer your question. I used pvc tube to put the swarf in and then poured waterclear polyester resin in. The problem with using a tube is that you don't always get a uniform amount of swarf along the tube. It might be better to use an oblong mould as you could then arrange the swarf as you wish.
I would use the aluminium first as it is easier to turn, I would imagine that the stainless would not be great as it is very tough and if you get a catch or it doesn't cut cleanly then it can drag out or break bits of the resin. If you do SS let us know how it goes although I doubt that I would be bothered making one from SS.
Peter
Peter
Your swarf is in curly continuous form or just in very short length, I believe brass chip could be different because it is in small tiny silver form.
Don't know what brass you have been machining but the last 1tonne of brass swaf i saw was gold
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Peter
Your swarf is in curly continuous form or just in very short length, I believe brass chip could be different because it is in small tiny silver form.
Btw, will it help if I manually compressed the swarf in the tube so that it will be evenly distributed in the tube?
My take on stainless steel (SS) swarf as a trained precision machinist is that, it will tearing out from the Polyster resin, reason is that the resin is much too softer and flexible than SS which itself is already very tough to work it especially with hand held tool.
However, if we can compact the SS swarf into cylinderical form, I believe it is still possible to machined it on a metal lathe with very sharp tool and very light cut.
I am most willing to try it if someone can cast the blank for me.