Tag: Pens

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Applying Clay to a Pen Barrel

The main considerations when applying your clay are:

  • Preparing the barrel
  • Height relative to the rest of the pen hardware
  • Avoiding distortion
  • Smoothing the barrel as much as possible before baking

Preparing the barrel

I don’t have a definitive answer on this. Some people say it’s critical to sand the barrel first — others say that’s only for woodworkers, and it’s better to have the barrel smooth. Others say you should coat the barrel first with PVA glue and let it dry.

I haven’t tried the PVA glue, but I’ve done both smooth and textured barrels and not been able to notice a difference between them.

I do find that when applying canes it’s nice to have the barrel a little tacky, so PVA glue may help with that.

Another solution (which is what I usually do) is covering the barrel with a sheet of clay rolled on the thinnest setting on your pasta machine, and then further rolled thin by rolling the barrel against the table with my hands and trimming the excess clay that comes off the ends. It technically adds a bit of height to the pen, meaning you’ll have to slice a wee bit thinner or sand a wee bit more, but it’s a minimal amount.

Applying clay to your pen

Whether you are covering your pen with cane slices of flowers, etc. like many artists do, or in kaleidoscope patterns like I do, you will need to slice your clay very thin.

For applying cane slices of flowers, etc., I prefer to apply them right on the barrel and design my pen there.

For my kaleidoscopes, I usually do four rows of triangles. I assemble three rows on a piece of waxed paper (like a deli sheet), roll the pen barrel on them by placing it on the middle row and then cupping the deli sheet around the barrel, and then I apply the fourth row directly on the barrel. This is because my canes are not usually the perfect size, and that lets me adjust the final row to be slightly smaller or slightly bigger as needed.

When I’m doing squares, I do the same: one fewer rows than I will have as my final total of rows done on the deli paper, and then the final one applied on the pen, even if it means I have to stretch my final row of squares a little bit.

Height

If you want to make sure your pen is a consistent height with the rest of the hardware, you will want to be aware of how much clay you can add before exceeding the bushings. Some kits, like the Slimline, don’t have much space between the barrel and the top of the bushing, making them a deceptively hard kit to use if you aren’t good at slicing thin slices and don’t want to do a lot of sanding.

Avoiding distortion

Consistent slices are also important: when you’re working on a flat surface you can often cheat with slices that are thicker by shaving them down after joining all your slices together. But on a curved and small surface like a pen barrel, this is much harder or impossible to do.

When you roll the barrel later, slightly-thicker slices will flatten more and push your other slices out of alignment. It makes it very hard to maintain an even-looking kaleidoscope pattern.

Patterns with black lines separating each triangle look even messier, because the wavy lines are much more obvious so consider this when deciding how to design your pen or design a pen that takes advantage of the waviness.

Smoothing the barrel

When rolling the barrel, either use the palm of your hand, or use a flat surface — if you use your fingers, you can introduce distortion and hills and valleys in your barrel. I prefer a clear acrylic block like the sort that is used for rubber stamps that don’t come with a back, because it’s easy to see what’s going on.

As you roll, you’re likely to notice the clay scooting off the end of your barrels — left unaddressed, that will cause your designs to stretch out at the ends of each of your barrels and be much more distorted there.

I pause every 20-30 seconds when rolling to gently nudge the edges back in, so I don’t lose that clay and have distorted ends.

The more work you do now smoothing the better. If you are good at both height and smoothing, you can start as high as ~800 grit sandpaper and do very little sanding.

If you are over height and want to get down to bushing height, you may need to start as low as 60 or 80 grit. Make sure if you’re over height that it’s due to cane slices and not just a thick tube covering, otherwise when you try to sand down to bushing height you may sand right through your cane slices.

Finishing the ends

When I’m done, I used do a final trim around the ends — but too often that meant that the clay pulled away from the barrel or I cut a bit past the barrel end, which looks a bit messy when the barrel is finished.

Now I trim the ends but do a final little roll to let the edges protrude just a bit beyond the edge, and then I sand those down quickly after baking.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Troubleshooting Pen Making: CA Glue

Making a pen is a more technical process than much of what we do with polymer clay, so there are a lot of places where things can go wrong, particularly when you combine different materials and equipment.

This article is much more complete thanks to the second half of this article on Toni Street’s website that discusses troubleshooting common problems. I’ve written it with my own troubleshooting, but my troubleshooting was definitely helped by what I learned initially from her.

CA glue cracks a few hours after you finish

This happened when I made my first pen using a poor quality CA accelerator or glue. Read the article on CA glue basics for more help.

It can also happen if you generate too much heat in the curing process: for me this was buffing too aggressively.

Toni notes that it could be due to the glue curing too fast. See her page for more tips on that. This hasn’t been an issue for me yet.

CA is white or cloudy in spots

Your pen wasn’t dry, or you used too much accelerator or sprayed it too closely to the pen blank. This can reportedly also happen in very humid climates due to the excess water in the air.

Cracks form weeks/months later

Toni notes that this is usually due to using a non-flex CA. See the article on CA glue basics for more help.

Part of your pen isn’t shiny despite you applying CA everywhere

You sanded below your CA finish and exposed the polymer clay below it. This has happened to me when I tried to sand two barrels at once by going back and forth across both of them: I over-sanded the ends of the barrels in the middle and under-sanded the ones at the far ends, resulting in bare plastic in the middle.

The good news is the solution is simple: just start over applying more CA. You do not need to re-sand all the CA off, just make sure you thoroughly clean and dry the barrels so there’s no dust, water, or oil on them before starting again.

Your CA is very bumpy

You applied too much CA too quickly and it clumped — this will not get better with more CA, you have to sand it back down before you continue.

Check every coat or two when applying it to catch this problem early before it gets worse. You can sand in the middle of your coats and continue applying CA afterwards, just make sure it’s dust- and water-free before continuing.

Your bushings are stuck to your pen after applying CA

If it’s just a thin coat of CA between the bushing and the pen, just twist them apart. If it’s a lot of CA, you applied too much CA or your pen blank was over the bushing height before you began applying the CA, and you need to sand it down more before adding the CA.

There are more tips in the article on finishing a pen with CA glue.

Your CA finish cracked when you pressed your pen together

You didn’t sand off excess CA after removing it from the bushings. See the article on finishing a pen with CA glue.

Your CA finish has pits in it/won’t get smooth

You didn’t apply enough CA to fill in the pits in your original clay finish. Consider sanding more and/or applying more or thicker CA. Medium CA will do a better job filling in pits, which is why I always end with at least 1-2 coats.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Basic pen making terms

Like any other activity, pen makers have their own specialized terminology that can be confusing when you first start.

Bands

The piece of metal that goes between two parts of the pen — e.g., where a twist pen twists.

You can get specialized bands engraved with various designs that fit specific pen kits; make sure you get one that fits your pen kit.

Barrel trimmer

Used to trim down a blank to exact size after cutting it. Not necessary for making polymer clay pens.

Blanks

Blanks are blocks of wood or acrylic that pen turners spin on a lathe and use woodworking tools to cut down to size. Sometimes polymer clay artists call their finished barrels “blanks” as well, especially if they’re selling just the barrels instead of the finished pens.

Bushings

Bushings are small metal tubes that you use on each end of your barrel to show what height you want the end of the barrel to be. If you want, the barrel can be different heights between them, but for a smooth pen feel, each end should match the bushing for that end.

Some kits have different bushings for each end, so pay attention to your kit’s directions and make sure you create your barrel correctly and then orient it correctly when assembling the pen.

Different pens have different kits, so pay attention to what you need for which kit and consider storing your bushings in bags that identify which kit(s) they are used with.

CA Accelerator

Accelerator is sprayed on to your CA after each layer if you want it to set faster.

CA Glue

Cyanoacrylate Glue makes a very durable finish for pens, including polymer clay pens. While superglue is technically a brand of CA glue, it is not a good choice for finishing pens.

Cap

The top of a pen.

Chisels

Used by pen turners for reducing a blank to appropriate size. Not used when making polymer clay pens unless you are turning them (which most people don’t.)

Clips

The clip is the part of the pen that attaches it to your pocket or notebook. Many pen kits that include clips can be assembled without the clip if you prefer a clip-less pen.

You can also buy specialized clips with various designs and engravings for different pen kits, just make sure you get one made for your pen kit.

Drill bits, chucks, etc.

Used by pen turners for drilling out a blank. Not necessary when making polymer clay pens.

IAP

The International Association of Pen Turners: https://www.penturners.org/

Lathe

Woodturners use lathes to turn their pens. Since we do not have to turn our pens, you can skip buying a lathe and either sand by hand or use something like a drill or Foredom.

Mandrel

A mandrel is just a rod you use to assemble the pen.

When you are turning a wooden pen, or finishing any pen (including polymer clay), you want a threaded mandrel so you can use nuts to tighten your barrels against the bushings so they don’t spin when you try to turn them or sand them.

You can assemble your own mandrel or buy one.

Pen Kit

A pen kit contains the hardware necessary to assemble a pen. It will have the ink, the tip, the appropriate mechanism (twist or click), and some brass barrels you will put clay around.

It will not include bushings, you will need to buy those separately if you want them.

Pen Press

A specialized piece of equipment that makes it easier to assemble a pen kit. You can also use a vice, though they can be harder to keep the pen kit in proper alignment, and if you don’t already have one they can cost almost as much as buying a pen press.

Pen Tube Insertion Tool

Not required for polymer clay pens, it’s used by pen turners who are drilling out blanks and need to insert the tube into the drilled blank.

Refills

Pen kits are usually designed like normal pens you purchase are and you can replace the ink when it is used up. Make sure you look up your kit and take a note of what refills it takes.

Tip

The point of a pen that the ink cartridge comes out of so you can write with it.

Tubes

Pen kits come with brass tubes that you will apply polymer clay to, to create the decorated barrels for your final kit. Different kits use different length tubes and sometimes a kit with two tubes has two different sizes or diameters for those tubes.

You can also just buy tubes on their own without the kits, which is cheaper and a good option if you want to experiment more or sell polymer clay “blanks” rather than finished pens.

If you haven’t yet applied CA glue, you can always peel your clay off a tube and re-use the tube if you didn’t like the pen you made, even after baking. If it doesn’t come off the tube by picking at it with your fingers, you can use a blade to slice into the clay and peel it off.

If you have already applied glue you could sand it down enough to be able to peel off the clay, but tubes are cheap enough (and can be bought on their own, without the pen kits) that that may not be worth the time and effort.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Quality of life equipment upgrades for pen making

Got the basics purchased but interested in some ways to make penmaking easier by spending a bit of money? Here are some of my favorite tools.

I do not get any commission from any links on my site, not even from Amazon. I am just sharing things I’ve found effective and helpful.

Kits and Tubes App

The International Association of Pen Turners has a database of bushings and tube sizes, but they also provide it in app form for iOS for $0.99: IAP Bushings & Tubes Reference. There’s also an Android version I haven’t personally used.

It’s definitely not required, but I’ve found it a useful reference and for $0.99 it’s a nice way to thank them for keeping the database up to date as well.

They will be updating the database again soon, according to their website, so while you may find some missing kits (I haven’t yet, but I’m using pretty standard kits) an update is supposedly coming.

Cutters

I used these PolyClay Tube Cutters from Penn State on every pen I make and find them well worth the $7 I paid for the set.

There are different sizes that will allow you to quickly and easily cut clay to fit (with no overlap) around the most popular pen barrel sizes: 7mm, 8mm, 3/8 in., 27/64 in. and 10mm.

They’re extra long, so they work with a variety of tube lengths, and you can easily trim the ends off your barrel after wrapping it.

When I’m doing a kaleidoscope I don’t use them, since I want it to tile perfectly (then I use my graph paper templates), but since I often like to work on a base layer of clay, they’re perfect for getting an easy base layer in place rolled out on the very thinnest level on my pasta machine.

PolyClay Mandrel

Also from Penn State, this PolyClay-specific mandrel makes it very easy for me to sand, finish, and polish my barrels on my drill. You can make one yourself (I give suggestions in my article on the minimum equipment necessary for penmaking), but I didn’t know that at the time.

I haven’t regretted the purchase though: the slightly flattened end nuts, long threaded rod, and knurled connecting nuts make it a breeze to use on my drill and I reach for it every time rather than my home made setups.

At $15 it’s not the cheapest thing out there, but for me it’s been worthwhile.

Round Cane Slicing Jig

I do not use this personally, because I don’t make pens like this, but many do, so I’m mentioning it as an option. If you’ve used it, I’d love to hear from you in the comments on this post!

Penn State also produces a PolyClay Cane Slicing Jig to make it easier to hand-slice round canes without distortion. If you already have one of the fancier slicers you may not be interested, or if you don’t do round canes often (like me), but at $10 it might be a useful purchase for the right person.

Thomas Scientific Blades

Switching to these Thomas Scientific Tissue Blades made a big difference for me in cutting my canes. They are thin but not overly flexible, and my slices have gotten much more even and thin.

LindasArtSpot sells them in 5, 10, and 25 packs. You may also be able to find them other places, but this is the source I know and where I got mine. They aren’t cheap — these are not the generic “tissue blades” you will find searching, they’re a specific brand I’ve found is significantly better than others I’ve tried — but I now use nothing else to slice my canes for my pens.

Wool buffing wheel

If you aren’t using a plastic polish and/or CA glue, this is a significantly better buffing wheel than any other one I have used: Buffing Shank with Wool Polishing Head 1”

It doesn’t leave nearly as many micro scratches behind, and as long as you buff thoroughly, it’s the best surface I’ve been able to get on clay using a buffing wheel.

Novus Polish

Novus Plastic Clean and Shine works great if you’re working on a drill or lathe, and has less of a chance of damaging your CA finish with the heat from a buffing wheel. The abrasive is suspended in a liquid, which helps heat disappation.

They also offer “Novus Polish Mate”, but having tried it, even though it’s cheap, I agree with the reviewers on amazon: it’s basically paper towels. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are having issues with paper towels.

CA Glue

I was very hesitant to start using CA glue but I’m so glad I did. I love the finish and the confidence to hand my pens over to people to use long term. One experienced polymer clay maker reported that she’s had a CA-coated pen in her backpack for almost a decade and the clay+CA surface is just as good as it was on the day she made it — the pen hardware has gotten more beaten up than the clay surface.

I wrote a lot of articles on how to use CA, since it’s an unfamiliar topic to experienced clay artists. They’re all listed on my index page for my articles on Making Polymer Clay Covered Pens.

Abranet

I confess: I am not a perfect slicer. And I slice too thick. Even with the blades above. Given that I make a lot of slimlines, this means I end up sanding…a lot.

I’ve come to love my Abranet mesh paper for sanding my pens. It’s much more durable than any other sandpaper I’ve used, and holds up well to even long sanding sessions as I get a barrel down to size.

(Note that you will find much cheaper mesh sandpapers available, but read the reviews carefully. Part of why Abranet is so popular is it sands well and lasts a long time, and other mesh sandpapers often don’t have the same qualities.)

Micro Mesh Sanding Pads

I used to use polishing papers, but about a year ago I switched to micromesh sanding pads and am very happy I did. (There’s also what appear to be very similar sanding sheets, though I haven’t used them.)

The set I bought didn’t include this dispenser, and you can probably find some that doesn’t, but I suspect the dispenser is actually really useful — one of the problems I always have is fumbling for the right color and keeping them straight, and I really like the construction of the one here.

Note that when you look at any micromesh pads you will see confused people writing negative reviews about how the pads are labeled wrong — they aren’t, they’re using a different labeling system.

Just remember that the sanding pads use a different grit system. The 1500 grit sanding pad is equivalent to a 400-600 grit sandpaper. Therefore, there’s no point in using your Abranet or sanding paper up to 800 or 1200 and then switching back to the lowest grit micromesh — you’re just undoing a bunch of work.

Pen Press

If you are using a vice today (or a rubber hammer), you may want to consider investing in a pen press. The best answer is a real pen press — and there’s one for sale on Amazon right now that is $38, which is very competitive with vice prices (and there’s one at Penn State for $50.) You may be able to find one cheaper somewhere else as well.

An alternative is the Assembly/Disassembly Pen Press from Penn State, which is the the one I have and can personally vouch for it working very well. I like having the option to dissemble a pen I’ve messed up, even if I don’t use it often.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Minimum Equipment to Make a Pen

Unlike woodworkers, we’re unlikely to have any of the basics necessary to make a pen other than the clay, so here’s several levels of “what’s the minimum list of stuff I need to make a pen?” lists for buying the pen hardware, assembling the pen, making the barrel, baking the barrel, and finishing the barrels.

I do not get any commission from any links on my site, not even from Amazon. I am just sharing things I’ve found effective and helpful.

I assume you have basic polymer clay supplies: clay, blades, rollers or pasta machines, etc. If not, here are two great guides to beginner basic supplies for the clay portion:

If you’re interested in some optional equipment that makes it easier to make quality pen, take a look at my article on quality of life equipment upgrades for pen making.

Options for the pen hardware

Cover a disposable pen

The most basic thing to do is cover a bic pen. They’re fun, easy, cheap, and a good way to decide if you like working at such a small scale. All you need is a pen that won’t melt in the oven. You can try any pen that’s cheap and easy for you to get. Bic Clic Stic, Bic Soft Feel Retractable, and Bic Round Stic are all pens I have heard will work, though it’s always worth double-checking yourself in case the manufacturer changed the formula. (And at least in the US, you can often get these locally at an office supply shop as they are a common brand.)

Be sure to remove the ink from the barrel before baking.

The way most people make them (applying clay around the existing barrel) means the pen cap will no longer fit on if you are using the Bic Round Stic.

You can manufacture a new barrel yourself out of copper sheets, but it will have many of the same challenges of being a small diameter that the slimline pen kit has.

You can also make a cap, though I was never successful in making one with enough tolerance to actually stay on, so they were more “sitting on my desk” pens than anything else.

Most of the tutorials you’ll find online for polymer clay pens are for covering this type of pen.

Use a no-press pen kit

If you like the idea of a more traditional looking pen but don’t want to mess around with pressing a pen together, you can use a no press pen kit. I found them to be not as sturdy as the regular pen kits, but that may have been my error or the specific kit I bought.

Disassemble and Reassemble a Bic Soft Feel retractable

I haven’t tried these personally, but Michelle Dorn Hoffner suggested them as an in between alternative, since you do need to use a press or vice to re-assemble, but they’re much cheaper if you mess them up than a metal pen kit.

They have the advantage over the basic bics listed above of being retractable, so you don’t need to worry about a pen cap. Here’s a link, but they’re purchaseable many places: BIC 8373971 Soft Feel Retractable Ballpoint Pen, Medium Point, Black, 12-Count

Use a regular pen kit

You can find these on amazon or from any one of many pen kit suppliers — just search Google for pen kits.

Be aware that while Slimline pens often appear like a good beginner pen, the bushings (i.e. the height of the pen hardware itself, that you want your clay to be exactly as tall as) aren’t much taller than the brass barrel itself, making them hard to use because your clay (e.g. your cane slices) needs to be much thinner.

Specifically, a slimline pen has room for about four playing cards of clay before you’re exceeding the bushings. (Not familiar with the playing card method of measuring clay height? Read about it here. 10 cards should equal approximately 2.5-3mm.)

For my Atlas, for example, where 0 is my thickest setting and 9 is the thinnest, four playing cards translates to 5 thickness being a tad too high over the bushings and 6 being a tad low. I usually pick a 5 and sand back down. You can do a similar measurement with your own pasta machine to figure out what thicknesses are appropriate for your machine (all are different, even if they’re the same brand and same model, since they are not precision machines.)

That said, if you don’t care about having your first few pen barrels flush with the hardware (I didn’t!), then slimlines are great because they are cheap and plentiful and a good way to see if this is something you enjoy doing.

Options for assembling the pen

For this you will need some way to press the parts together. At a bare minimum you need a rubber hammer to use that to gently tap the parts together — but I wouldn’t recommend it, and if you don’t already own one I definitely wouldn’t recommend buying one.

You can also use a bench vice — it will need to be one that can go as wide as your widest piece you need to press, which could be several inches. While woodworkers often already have a vice in their shop, polymer clay artists are less likely to. And once you start looking at 4-5” vices, they don’t seem to be much cheaper than $30-$40 (though you may be able to get one used somewhere.) They also have the disadvantage that it’s harder to keep the pen fully in alignment — and if you don’t, you could bend the hardware and ruin the kit or even your barrel.

The best answer is a real pen press — and there’s one for sale on Amazon right now that is $38, which is very competitive with vice prices (and there’s one at Penn State for $50.) You may be able to find one cheaper somewhere else as well.

An alternative is the Assembly/Disassembly Pen Press from Penn State, which is the the one I have and can personally vouch for it working very well.

Options for making the barrel

Do nothing special

This will result in a pen that’s probably not flush with the hardware — but that may not matter to you.

It’s how I did my first few pens and plenty of people happily make their pens that way.

Use a home-made mandrel

Any 1/4-20 threaded rod (or M6 in metric) will work, but so will a knitting needle if you have a ~6-7mm needle (sizes 2-4 UK, or 10-10.5 US). If your needle is on the smaller end of that range, you will want to use masking tape to thicken it a bit, or use rubber bands or a similar solution to hold the tube in place.

You can also buy 7mm smooth rods, which work great and are a bit easier to slide the unbaked barrels back and forth on.

I prefer having something that is 1/4” or 7mm (M6) exactly and then put my bushings on also: this makes it much easier to get my pen barrel to the right height even if I’m not using a drill to sand it down and will be doing it by hand.

Buy a mandrel (or use a threaded rod) and attach it to your drill/lathe

Penn State sells a nice PolyClay Mandrel that works great either by hand, or if you’re attaching it to your drill or lathe.

Alternatively, you can use a threaded rod, but I found a 6” one (the largest my local hardware store had) to be too short to comfortably do two pen barrels so I’m happy with my mandrel purchase and I use my threaded rods for baking instead. But a longer one would work just fine (or do only one barrel on your drill at once.)

Options for baking the barrel

If you have the mandrel from Penn State, it’s designed with flat bottoms on the two large nuts on the ends so it won’t roll, and you can bake your barrels right on that.

You can use any bead rack you have or have made.

Or, I made little ‘feet’ out of polymer clay for my smooth rods as you can see in the image to the left here. The bottom is four layers of the thickest setting on my pasta machine, and the top is a single layer to hold the rod in place.

I made eight of them so I can use them to hold or bake multiple sets at once.

I like using spare slimline bushings to protect the end of the barrels so they don’t bump up into sharp edges on the feet before baking.

Options for finishing the barrel

I have several articles on hardware options for finishing the barrels, so I won’t repeat that here:

If you are finishing by hand, any sandpaper, polishing papers, and buffing method you’re used to using is sufficient.

If you are finishing with a drill or lathe, you can use your existing sandpaper and polishing papers, or you can look into abranet or sanding tape (I use both and find them very effective with the drill doing the work.)

You can also consider using CA glue (see my Making Pens page to see all my posts on using CA glue), but it’s a bigger investment than just normal sanding and buffing.

If you have a drill or lathe, consider Novus 1 Plastic Clean and Shine for your final buffing/polishing step. If not, any buffing wheels are a good choice, though these wool buffing wheels are the absolute best I’ve ever used and I don’t use anything else at this point.

Lost your pen kit directions?

The IAP (International Association of Penturners) has a very nice database of bushings and barrels and instructions that you can view online or email and print.

They also have a cheap app version of it for iOS and Android.

More?

If you’re interested in some optional equipment that makes it easier to make quality pen, take a look at my article on quality of life equipment upgrades for pen making.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Sanding a Polymer Clay Pen

If you’re making polymer clay pens you’re probably very experienced at sanding polymer clay, but sanding pens requires some new methods.

Not experienced at finishing polymer clay, or feel like you could use some help with something that will be handled as much as a pen? I can’t recommend Ginger’s Sanding and Buffing e-book strongly enough. I thought I was an experienced polymer clay finisher before reading her book, but it absolutely took my work to an entirely new level, and I credit it for much of why moving to pens wasn’t too big a jump.

If you don’t have a drill or lathe

Your only option is to cup the sandpaper in your hand and sand as evenly as you can.

If you do have a drill or lathe

First, make sure you have the right bushings for your pen kit. Even if you don’t end up applying CA glue, your final pen will look more professional if it’s sanded to the height of the bushings.

I have Abranet, which works quite well, but I also like the systems like this one that store roles of sandpaper: PSI Woodworking SPSETMOD Modular Sandpaper System

Since the drill or lathe does the work for you, all you need is sandpaper you can hold up against the barrel as it spins.

Prepare to sand

If I’m using Abranet or other reusable sandpaper, I have two separate bowls of water: one clean, that I use to wet the new sandpaper, and the other dirty where I rinse it off.

It’s very important on something like a pen, that will be handled and be viewed close to the face that you don’t have grits from previous rounds of sanding being rubbed in when you are using a higher grit.

If I’m just using sandpaper strips, then a bowl of water I put unused sandpaper in to wet it is fine.

Remember safety, and if you normally use a dust mask when sanding, you’ll definitely want to use one here as well.

A spinning drill will happily spin off water at you and everything around you too, so you may want to drape some shop towels to protect anything in ‘blast radius’.

Start sanding

While your goal when building a barrel is to get it as close to the bushings before sanding as possible, this can be very hard to do — especially with kits like the Slimline (a popular, cheap kit) because there’s so little distance between the top of the bushings and the barrel itself.

If I need to, I will start as low as 60 grit to get the barrel down to size fast. You may also have to start with a low grit if you didn’t make your barrel very smooth at the start.

Regardless of what grit you start with, the steps are all the same:

Your first 1-2 grits will be the bulk of your work as you’re getting the barrel smooth and close to your bushings. Don’t hesitate to spend as much time here as necessary.

Whenever you switch grits it’s always critical to do two steps:

  1. Always turn off your drill or lathe and sand the long way along each pen blank with gentle pressure from your fingertips. This reduces how much time you’ll have to spend on future grits because you won’t be trying to get a circular groove out
  2. Always wipe off your pen barrel entirely, ideally with a damp rag, to make sure you get all bits of grit and plastic off — otherwise you’ll be digging grooves from the prior grit in with the new grit, and you’ll be very frustrated trying to get it smooth

Use a flashlight if you need to to check in on how well you’re doing at avoiding grooves sticking around from prior levels.

Even if you’re finishing with CA, this sanding step is critical: not only do you need to get it down to at or very slightly below bushing height, but any grooves or scratches you leave now will be amplified by the CA later.

If you’re just going to stop after sanding, feel free to go all the way through micromesh and then your polishing papers, and end with a good buff.

If you’re using CA, go down to 600-800 (or higher, if you feel you need to) and then switch to applying CA.

Next articles to read are:

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Finishing Pens: Drill with Lock-on

I was very interested in finding a solution that let me use both hands at once, so searched for drills and found this Ryobi (model D43K) with this specific feature: “The variable speed trigger helps you match the speed to the application, while the lock-on feature enables continuous drilling and helps to reduce operator fatigue during long drilling times.”

Advantages:

  • Corded, so won’t run out of battery mid-pen
  • ”lock-on” feature reduces finger fatigue during longer sessions

Disadvantages:

  • Doesn’t stand up on its own

To solve the last hurdle, I rigged together a setup with two vices and some Velcro cable ties and it works surprisingly well. It’s not perfect: there’s a bit of give, and you can’t orient the handle 90 degrees the other way, the vice won’t hold it steady. But I haven’t had any issues yet and I’ve been using it for a few weeks now.

When I’m not doing a pen, I just remove the mandrel and I get almost my whole work space back — if you have a larger table, it would be even less of an issue.

Here’s a photo of the drill in its vices:

Next up I’d like to look into flex shafts, because I suspect that would be the perfect final solution for me: attach a flex shaft, put that in the vice, use the always-on button on the drill and finish my pens easily and safely. When I’ve done that, I will make another post here.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Finishing Pens: Cordless Drills

Finishing pens by hand is doable, but it’s harder to get a perfectly symmetrical finish and takes longer. Luckily, since we don’t need a lathe, there are some good and cheaper power tool options available.

Dremels are a popular tool, but unfortunately will not work as well for pens: pens work with a 7mm (1/4”) mandrel (or sometimes larger), and Dremels do not go above a 1/8” shank unless you have a much older one, as the motor isn’t strong enough to drive it effectively.

If you already own a Foredom tool, they can substitute very well for a lathe, and can run hands-free like the Dremel does, but if you don’t they are also expensive for a single tool purchase.

If you aren’t planning on using woodworking tools to literally turn your clay pens, the good news is there is a much cheaper option, though it requires a bit more fiddling: a standard drill.

The first, and simplest solution I used was a cordless drill like the one pictured here. I did have a corded drill, but as it didn’t have a flat bottom, I had to hold it up the whole time which was tiring very quickly when trying to sand.

Advantages:

  • Stands up on its own; my arms didn’t get tired trying to hold a drill in place while I sanded/finished a pen
  • No cord to worry about

Disadvantages:

  • My battery only lasted for 1-3 pens (depending on how much sanding I did)
  • No “hands free” operation: one hand had to be holding it in place and holding the trigger down.

Here are some photos of my cordless drill set up to finish two slimline barrels:

I’m using the polymer clay mandrel from Penn State Industries, but you could use any threaded 7mm or 1/4” rod with some low-profile nuts or extra bushings/spacers to keep regular nuts further away from where you will be sanding.

Next: how I solved the problem of not being able to do my pen finishing hands-free. Read that post here.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Finishing Pens: By Hand

Woodturners use lathes to finish their pen blanks, because they need to carve the wood or acrylic down to size. If you have access to a lathe, that’s obviously a fine solution, but unlike pen turners who work in wood, many polymer clay artists do not have access to a lathe.

The good news is, unless you are actually trying to turn a pen using woodworking tools to carve into it after baking or to reduce its size faster than sanding alone would do, you don’t need a lathe.

In later posts I’ll cover how I use drills to finish pens, but you can sand a pen by hand without using any power equipment at all.

Before sanding

If you are finishing by hand, you will want to make sure it’s as smooth as possible. The best way to do this is to roll it gently on the table with a clear acrylic block or tile or other smooth surface.

Alternatively, you can use the heel of your hand, not your palm or fingers. If you use your palm or fingers you will put uneven pressure on it.

Be sure to roll gently and slowly. If you have creases in your clay from where cane slices joined, you can gently roll a knitting needle tip across them to speed up the process. But if you roll on the table too quickly or pressing too hard, you will distort your canes near the edges and may even push the clay off the pen barrel.

Sanding

Start with the highest grit you can. If you were able to get the clay very smooth, that might be 240, 320, or 400. If it’s bumpy, you may need to start lower.

Cup the sandpaper in your hand and sand evenly around the whole pen barrel. Be sure to sand in both directions — back and forth as well as around — to avoid leaving scratches in one direction.

Sand as high as you can, finishing with micromesh or finishing papers if you have them, and then buff.

A note about height and bushings

Pen turners use “bushings” (small metal tubes of a particular diameter) to get their pen bodies flush with the rest of the pen hardware. If you are sanding by hand and care about a smooth transition across the length of the pen, it’s extra important to try to get the height of your pen body as close as possible before baking, so you minimize the amount of sanding you need to do.

Here’s an example of two pens I did. The first is one carefully sanded down to bushing height before being assembled. The second is one of my early ones, before I knew to pay attention to bushing height.