Sometimes silliness creeps into the workday. It happened a long while back, when I assembled Stick 13, Intent Moves Matter.
Somehow, I made a joint collar out of Delrin.
I always call it Delron because it reminds me of my semi-unintelligent third cousin from Alabammy.
Nothin’ sticks to it, is the point.
Including Solarez, the finish I use on sticks.
I replaced the joint collar with phenolic (closest to the headstock, or left side of the screen); the phenolic is gray next to the shiny mandrel in the chuck. The phenolic collar needs black dye and an epoxy base before I finish it with Solarez.
Phenolic plastics are resins made of phenol and formaldehyde, which are bound together with a base material such as linen, cotton, paper, or glass fabric. Mine is linen. Phenolic material is fantastic for cue building because it is extremely durable.
The rest of the stick is already finished in Solarez — though it had only seen 4,000 grit. I quit for supper with plenty left to buff.
Then I found a couple bubbles in the butt collar — (when the stick is in my finishing booth, the heater is on the opposite side of the stick) — and that, combined with the tendency of any finish to bubble up at the end of the stick, if the excess is not carefully directed elsewhere, created a divine opportunity for bubbles to form.
I was afraid I’d need to sand it down to bare material, and epoxy both, and refinish both ends at the same time.
So I sanded with wet 320 until the bubbles were gone and was happy to discover the finish was still plenty thick. No need to redo both ends. Just the one.
Regardless, when I saw how pretty it was, going from the slimy white Meguiar’s shine, to the bold orange beech, I thought I’d share the moment of simple beauty.
Thought I’d ‘splain, is all.
😉
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