First Acrylic and a saved pen

I finally got around to turning my first acrylic blank, a tortise shell Polaris pen kit from www.woodturningz.com. They had a great end of season sale, and I bought a bunch of kits and blanks.

Turning the acrylic was a challenge. I found that the chisels needed to be super sharp, and that the lathe needed to be turned down a few notches for finishing. I always use Micromesh, but at my normal speeds for turning wood, I was getting lots of lines in the finish of the blank. It also ripped up my 1500 and 2400 sheets of micro mesh. Acrylic doesn’t like the faster speeds.

The slimline in the picture is a pen that I saved from a blowout with a little CA glue. I’m getting better at salvaging these pens, though I have quite a few new ones that I don’t feel that I can give away because of the cracks.

Overall, the tortise Polaris took three times as long as the Slimline because I had to start over on the finishing several times. It turned out nice in the end.

-- Mark, Florida, http://penturner.wordpress.com/