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Tuesday, November 7, 2017

L is for Lady Pen


Not a euphemism for the contents of Donald Trump's codpiece, and now known as "Pen Lady", due to the fact she is no longer a pen-  after conversion below; this charming 19th Miss, was one of the more esoteric items in a recent parcel from Peter Evans.

You can see she would happily pass muster at any ball from the Wellintonian age to the late 1800's, taking the Crimea, ACW, Scarlet O’Hara and Wild West saloons in her stride. She's just over 70mm, so a bit on the tall side and she has 'Disney' eyes, but they can be reduced with some fine brush-work.

Hardly a 'conversion' but rather; the removal of the pen's barrel and the adding of a suitable base. I wasn't sure of the plastic type of the novelty pen, and while it was certainly heavy enough to be resin, while sawing it though, there was a distinct smell of polystyrene? I cut from both sides due to the nature of the skirts' sculpting; it also left me with a slight hollow in the middle for the gluing phase.

Equally, while I had a nice piece of opalescent 'turf' - courtesy of my tubs of old game counters, gambling chips and tiddlywinks for just such jobs - I'm not too sure what its polymer is either! It's very likely to be tumble-polished, and either a Bakelite, an early phenolic resin or even a urea-formaldehyde compound of some kind?

So they get the mixture; a couple of drops of styrene-cement on the base, some plumbers-sealant dollopped onto the cut area of the figure, then two drops of super-glue over the styrene-cement and another two over the sealant, then both halves squished together and twisted a few part-turns to get the mix mixed!

A two-part epoxy would do the job just as well, but it's a faff and where's the fun in that? The beauty of the mix is that as it 'goes off' the sealant pulls everything tight and the combination seems to prevent the frosting you'd otherwise get with that quantity of cyanoacrylate.

Not looking too shabby! A useful addition to any collection, and I bet there are a few different designs to look out for, one day I may re-paint her, but for now she'll do - Thanks Peter, I hope you don't mind the vandalism required to obtain the stand-alone figurine!

2 comments:

  1. Not such a bad sculpt. I wonder what it would like to gnaw on that one?

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  2. Well, it was quite soft plastic, although it looks like resin, I'm sure it was styrene, so it would be a little like chewing on a lollipop, albeit one with little flavour . . . like one of those cheap seaside ones Jan!

    H

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