# A great way to use up those little pieces of stuff



## Schroedc (Jan 22, 2016)

Decided yesterday to work on something new out of my shop as another way to use up some of those 3/4 x 3/4 x 3/4 blocks of acrylic left over from making pens that pile up in a bucket in my shop. I glue them to the end of a scrap 3/4 acrylic rod and put in my collet chuck and then turn and polish a nice domed cabochon the right diameter for the bookmark and then part it off. Glue on with some CA or Epoxy and it's done. You can also use this process for cuff links and other jewelry. (One block of 3/4 material will generally do at least 2 cabochons so you can do matching pairs for things)

Reactions: EyeCandy! 3 | Way Cool 5


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## manbuckwal (Jan 22, 2016)

And here I thought u were gonna say u were making hair sticks with em

Reactions: EyeCandy! 1 | Funny 2


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## Schroedc (Jan 22, 2016)

manbuckwal said:


> And here I thought u were gonna say u were making hair sticks with em



Nope, Ain't never made a redneck nose picker in my shop.

Reactions: EyeCandy! 1 | Funny 6 | Creative 1


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## kweinert (Jan 22, 2016)

This is definitely cool. I did find it amusing that you clipped all that acrylic to a book on wood though :)

I might have to look at this myself. I have a couple of 5 gallon buckets of cutoffs of various sizes that I plan on putting into a sandpaper tumbler and turn into beads. Mind you I still haven't made the tumbler although I have the container for it. Somewhere in the shop. So stuff like this might be a good alternative.

Another idea I've seen for those (well, it was actually made from something else but I saw the wood application in my mind when I saw these) were Christmas ornaments made from miniature tart tins (like these: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/sto...artlet-pans-set-of-20/1044647612?Keyword=tart). The person that did them punched a small hole in one edge for the hook and then hung some bead things underneath, put various somethings in the center.

I'm not sure how large that center bit is so the pen sized blanks might not make a cabachon large enough to look good. But it's an idea worth playing with.

Reactions: Creative 1


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## Schroedc (Jan 22, 2016)

kweinert said:


> This is definitely cool. I did find it amusing that you clipped all that acrylic to a book on wood though :)
> 
> I might have to look at this myself. I have a couple of 5 gallon buckets of cutoffs of various sizes that I plan on putting into a sandpaper tumbler and turn into beads. Mind you I still haven't made the tumbler although I have the container for it. Somewhere in the shop. So stuff like this might be a good alternative.
> 
> ...



Not a bad idea... They are a 2.5 inch diameter pan so I'd guess the center do dad would probably be around an inch. Might have to pick some up the next time I'm in there and give it a whirl.


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## ironman123 (Jan 22, 2016)

Those are nice bookmarkers Colin.

Reactions: Thank You! 1


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## rdabpenman (Jan 23, 2016)

Nicely done. 

Les


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## kweinert (Jan 28, 2016)

Just a quick followup on the tart tin idea.

I was at BBB last night, looking for the package of them that I saw online. Turns out the store doesn't stock them, but they do have individual ones for sale. I only bought a couple because I had it in my mind that they were cheaper online.

I looked at them online this morning and I was wrong. In the store they have 3 sizes. I picked up the smallest one and it's about 2 1/4" across the widest side, about 1 3/8" across the narrowest part of the bottom, and the little center indent is about 1". In the local store they were $0.49 each. With shipping, the online price puts them at $1.00 each. Even without shipping they're about $0.69 each.

It's possible that there's a quality difference, but the ones I picked up in store are not really low quality. Sure, I could bend it in one hand, but it's much better than tin foil quality. Plenty good enough to use for my purposes. They'd be able to sit in your Christmas ornament storage without fear of them being mangled when you opened up next year.

Oh, and while I didn't measure them, the other 2 sizes in store were $0.59 and $0.79. The next size up could be a candidate for an ornament but in my opinion the biggest one would be overly large.

Reactions: Like 1


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