How to Use a CA Glue as a Pen Finish

It maybe hard to believe but CA glue—Cyanoacrylate makes a wonderful and durable finish for pens like this. The deal is that we get done with this process, the finish it leaves on there is going to be very, very shiny and unlike some of the other pen type finishes that are shiny when you're done. The CA glue is very capable of being handled and holding onto that shine for a long time. Some of the other finishes, the more you handle the pen or other turnings, the more that shine leaves the turning. To with the CA glue, it’s very, very durable. It’s going to be shiny forever.

What I just got done doing was sanding as I normally would. Now the finer you sand it, the better finish you're going to get. This is a little bit of rose wood here. I sum that up an 800 grip. Then running the laid with a little bit of lacquer thinner on my paper towel. I clean the sodas residue off of there. What I want to do next is reduce the RPM on the machine. We’re ready to apply the glue. We don’t want to do that at this high sanding speed. So I'm going to dial my RPM’s way down, so I'm running it at much lower RPM. So you want to center, lay down slow.

We want to use a thick form of CA glue. Now what's going to happen is I'm going to wide up a paper towel, get it nicely folded here. Apply the CA glue to the paper towel and then apply that intern to the pan turning keeping it moving. We want to be very conservative with the glue, so that it’s not flying all over the place, getting on you, getting on your safety glasses. So, it take us very little glue just enough to get that surface wet. Once we’ve got that on there, we’re let that dry and have a look at the next step.

That just enough there for one side, now I can hit the other side. Now we’ll give that first coat a chance to cure on there. You can use accelerator if you want but if you do be very conservative, if you were use accelerator in any application with CA glue it can cause it to crystallize. So really, I prefer to just give a little bit of time, allow that glue to cure without that accelerator then we’ll be ready for sanding this out. We want to get a total of three coats on this.

Now I'm going to take the speed back up on my lathe using 800 grit sandpaper. I'm going to sand that CA glue out. Slow my RPMS back down, wipe the sanding dust off, now another coat of glue. First time I did this, I was amazed that when I got to this step that the glue didn’t just grab onto that paper towel and wrap it around the pan. I've had such great luck using CA glue for so many instant gluing after application. I though for sure that it would bond the paper towel right to the pan. But as long you keep moving, give it a chance to cure, its going to work just fine.

So now we’re let that second coat dry, sand it out. We got one more coat on there. That takes care of the third coat on here. Now a couple of things are important, again, low RPM in this particular machine right now, I'm running at 600 RPM. You want to keep that low, so the glue doesn’t come zinging off. The benefit to the paper towel is that if it does catch. The paper is going to tear instead of using a rug as a general rule for finishing. I always I want to finish with a paper towel not a cloth rug. Just because of that potential for catching, pulling my fingers into the machine.

Third coat is dry. Take my RPM back up. I'm going to level that up, I'm going to sand that with my 800 grit. It’s very smooth, clean that residue off. Now I'm going to close my glue bottle because if I leave that open too long and its going to start to cure right there inside the tip. To get a nice polish on this, I'm going to hit with just a little bit of buffing compound on this stick. That’s what going to bring the sheen up. Look at the gloss that’s on that rose wood very, very nice, real high sheen and like I said, the real beauty of this is this pan is going to hold that gloss despite lots and lots of handling for really, really long time.

CA glue works great for a finish in this applications.