# Pen Casting Didn't "Stick"!



## Royce (Apr 16, 2015)

I need some advice. Here's what I did...

I printed out a pattern on "water-slide" decal paper. Cut the decal to size to wrap around the pen tubes. All good so far. Plugged the ends of the tubes and put the now decal wrapped pen tubes in my silicone pen casting molds and cast them using Alumilite. Again, so far so good. Everything came out looking good.

The first couple, when I attempted to square up the ends of my now cured castings using a pen mill, I got a "catch" and the clear casting appeared to "flex" enough to pull the casting resin away from the decal leaving a "cloudy" look. No problem. The next ones I carefully squared up the ends using a disk sander. Again, so far so good.

Next, when I mounted the pen tube blanks on my pen mandrel and apply just a bit of pressure to snug them up, the pen bushings appear to again cause just a bit of "flex" in the Alumilite casting to cause it to pull away from the pen tube.

In a nutshell, the casting doesn't appear to adhere securely enough to the water-slide decal to really "stick".

Any thoughts on how to make this work? Thanks.


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## jttheclockman (Apr 16, 2015)

Switch to PR. Better for casting on tube. Silmar41 can't beat it hands down.


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## Nikitas (Apr 16, 2015)

I had the same problem on one I did...Did you heat the mold prior to casting?? That helped my issues...


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## longbeard (Apr 16, 2015)

That's the reason I don't use a barrel trimmer. Sand the ends square. 


Harry


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## jttheclockman (Apr 16, 2015)

longbeard said:


> That's the reason I don't use a barrel trimmer. Sand the ends square.
> 
> 
> Harry




He said he did on one of them and still had the problem.


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