First Home Stabilized Cob Pen

[William Young]

The Experimenting Continues.

Here are a few that I tried something else with today.

I put them in liquefied Plexiglas and drew a vacuum on them for about 5 or 6 hours. Then took them out and put them on a rack .
I drilled holes on some for pen tubes and left some not drilled . Drilling very dry cobs before stabilizing can cause tear-out where the drill bit enters or exits because it is in such a fragile state before stabilizing. I tried both fast and slow drilling
If the stabilizing got right through to the center , then it would be better to drill the holes later.

I have no idea if this is going to work or not or how soon I can try making a pen out of a couple of those blanks.
One thing I did notice was that within seconds of taking them out of the liquid they were dry to the touch and could actually be picked up and rolled around on my hand whereas the ones that I did with polyurethane were sticky wet for hours before they started to cure.

Has anyone here tried this method of stabilizing ? I have no idea just how long it will take them to "cure" .

W.Y.

[Ramjet]

William . I was looking through one of Patrick Spielman's books and he mentioned a product called ESP-90. Have you heard about it or tried it ? It is some kind of stabalizer developed in th 1990's by Eugene Sexten . Patrick Spielman also mentions somewhere that he was developing another method for drying other than PEG . I can't find the article other than it was supposed to come out in the future . Look forward to seeing your results .
Roger

[William Young]

As mentioned earlier I would share whether or not the Plexiglas solution turned out good or otherwise.
I must say the result is "otherwise" because it caused the cob to become very brittle and I was experiencing chipping out of the kernel bases no matter how sharp my tools were. . They had to be filled with a slurry of sanding dust and CA.
Glad I didn't try to stabilize very many with that method.
So it appears the resin stabilized ones that can be purchased on line is the best way, then the polyurethane as second choice and then the Plexiglas as third choice.
I am not sure what the system is for the resin method . The ones I purchased on ebay said they were commercially stabilized with resin .

I did however manage to get a couple pens out of the pieces of cob I tried in the past hour.
They are both St Charles kits . One in 24K gold plating and one in gun metal.

W.Y.