Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
acrylic finial
Keith Tompkins
I was wondering if an acrylic pen blank could be turned into a finial. I had never tried turning the stuff, so here is my first attempt....I used regular turning tools and regular techniques. No scraping was required.
Re: acrylic finial
John K Jordan
Excellent! I've turned a bunch of acrylic and love it. It polishes so easy.
All my stock is 1-1/2" cast acrylic cylinders. What are you using? I haven't tried any pen blanks. Do you have a good source for the blanks? With the larger diameter I've made ornaments and things, although I have cut some cylinders into quadrants to turn smaller things. I didn't use scrapers either, mostly spindle gouge, skew, and Hunter tools. Polished with a variety of things like metal polish, plastic polish, dry buffing compound, and even MicoMesh sandpaper - all worked well.
Did you have any trouble with long strands wrapping around the piece, having to stop and pull/cut away the bird's nest every little bit? I did until I discovered if I turn on the dust collector with the pickup nozzle just behind the piece, the beginning of the long strand gets sucked up and the rest of it follows with nary a loop on around the work!
JKJ
Re: acrylic finial
Keith T
Hi John, mine are pen blanks, you description is right on! Having fun with this!!
long strands problem
john lucas
Well I typed a long thing on my phone and I guess it never made it here. I was turning a project out of polyester resin and was getting those beautiful strands. Like John I got tired of them sticking all over me and move my dust collector hose close enough to suck it right from the turning. Big smile on my face as I watched all those long strands just dissappear. A few days later I noticed that my dust collector just wasn't collecting like it should. After taking apart several sections of pipe and not seeing any problem I took the pipe loose that comes directly from the dust collector. My dust collector inlet has 2 metal bars crossed to form an X and is designed I guess to keep large things like rags and big pieces of wood from hitting the impeller. There were all my nice long acrylic shavings wrapped around those bars almost completely blocking the 6" pipe.
Re: long strands problem
John K Jordan
>>>My dust collector inlet has 2 metal bars crossed to form an X and is designed I guess to keep large things like rags and big pieces of wood from hitting the impeller. There were all my nice long acrylic shavings wrapped around those bars almost completely blocking the 6" pipe.
Yikes, I guess you'll have to learn to make short stabbing or scrapey cuts instead of long, beautiful continuous cuts!
My cyclone doesn't have obstructions in the ducts but I did find a bird's nest in the bin when I emptied it.
JKJ
Very Cool!
Don Orr
Beautiful finial from the expert! I have not turned acrylic yet, but have done a bunch of Corian. I also turned some vintage plastic called Catalan-similar to Bakelite but colored. It is the most miserable stuff to turn. Regular tools work sometimes and scrapers work sometimes, and sometimes neither. It shatters at the slightest touch sometimes. I got it from my father-in-laws junk after he passed away and made ornaments with it last year-never again! It took probably 2 hours to make 1 small finial because I had to be so gentle. They did polish up nicely though.
Love the other ornament you posted too.