Pizza in Torino Transferred to Watercolor Paper

I transferred Pizza in Torino to watercolor paper. I really like the texture a watercolor paper transfer gives a print. Click here for instructions on how I transfer images to watercolor paper.

I made a couple of extra transparencies to transfer the image to a clear acrylic panel backed by rice paper. The light areas in the sky and elsewhere will let the rice paper show through and should make for an interesting texture. This will be my first transfer to an acrylic panel using DASS Supersauce.

Pizza in Torino Transferred to Watercolor Paper

Pizza in Torino

Bullet Pen - Part 2

I spent a few minutes after work in the shop working on the bullet pen:

• Polished the cartridge with 0000 steel wool and Brasso.
• Pressed the twist mechanism into the cartridge.
• Sanded and polished the camouflage section.
• Epoxied the finial brass to the cylindrical tenon.
• Inserted the ink refill and assembled the lower and upper sections.

And here's what it looks like so far:

Next time I'll turn a tip/bullet for the pen, polish the finial, and clean up the interface between the finial and the camouflage acrylic where some epoxy squeezed out.

After this first try, I'll figure out how to put a clip on the the next one. I bought a couple of cool rifle pen clips from Woodcraft that should finish things off nicely. Even if you don't use the clip, if nothing else, it keeps the pen from rolling off the desk.

I'm surprised -- the pen is much more comfortable to hold than I thought it would be.

Bullet Pen

I've seen pens made out of rifle cartridges. Some are made from purchased kits and others are made from scratch using actual cartridges.  I decided to try my hand at a scratch built pen. Dad sent me a box of fired Winchester .284 cartridges and I bought some camouflage acrylic blanks from Penn State Industries and got to work.

After looking around at some examples online, I decided to make a twist style pen using the drive mechanism, brass tubes, and ink refill from a slim line pen kit. One nice thing about using the slim line parts: the 7mm brass tubes fit nicely in the business end of the .284 cartridge.

Here's what I've done so far:

• The cartridges Dad sent had fired primers in them and the slightly off center dimple from the firing pin tended to start the drill off center. It's important that the hole through the cartridge head be on center, so I ordered some new brass from Midway USA. As you'll see, the fired shells still make a nice addition to the pen.
• With shiny new brass in hand, I mounted my brand spankin' new Beall Collet Chuck to the head stock of my lathe.  Using a 1/2" collet to hold the cartridge, I drilled out the primer seat with a 7mm drill bit in a drill chuck attached to the tail stock.
• One of the 7mm brass tubes was then epoxied into the cartridge, flush with the end of the cartridge where the primer seat was drilled out. This leaves the brass tube about 1/8" short of the other end of the cartridge where the bullet is normally seated. This will act as a stop for the faux bullet that I turn for the pen tip.
• Next, I mounted one of the fired cartridges in the collet chuck and turned the lathe on. Using a mini hack saw, I parted the head of the cartridge off. The brass was deburred and then further cleaned up with 100 grit sand paper on a granite surface plate. This will act as a finial for the pen, as you'll see from the pictures.
• After cutting one of the camouflage pen blanks to length, drilling, and gluing in the other brass tube from the slim line kit, I mounted the blank between a dead and a live 60 degree center and turned the square blank to a cylinder. One end of the cylinder was sized to match the outer diameter of the head of the full shell. On the other end, I created a cylindrical tenon that will fit into the "mortise" created by the inner diameter of the parted off section of the fired cartridge.

Here's what I have so far. The first picture is of the individual parts and the second is of the parts lined up as they will eventually go together. The pen twist drive mechanism will go between the head of the full cartridge and the turned camouflage acrylic section.

Pen parts.Pen parts lined up like they'll eventually go together.

What's next? I'll turn a tip for the pen out of maple to look like a bullet. Then everything will get polished and assembled. I'll post a picture of the pen when it's complete (and maybe one more intermediate step). I'm not sure if it will be very comfortable to write with, but it should look pretty cool!

Sides On!