Specific question about pen storage and "flocking"

[Paul-in-SF]

I am considering using "flocking" as part of a pen storage project, to soften the hard edges and corners of the wood pen drawers. Flocking consists of two parts: an undercoat adhesive, and the flocking threads. The threads (really fine, more like dust to my eyes) are usually made of rayon. One brushes on the undercoat and immediately applies the flocking under very light pressure of air until thoroughly covered, then lets it dry for at least 15 hours, and knocks off any threads that didn't stick The undercoat adhesive is where I derive my question, which is this: is this formulation, when used as directed, chemically dangerous to fountain pens stored in a closed space?

 

This is what it says on the can: 

 

"This product contains a maximum of 380 grams or 3.2 pounds of v.o.s. per gallon of coating. (proprietary) alkyd resin; 8030-76-0 lecithin; 1313-80-2 titanium dioxide; 1317-65-3 calcium carbonate; 64742-47-2 mineral spirits. voc: less than 477 gms/l; 3.98 lbs./gal."

 

There are various warnings on the can about not breathing the fumes, etc. which I intend to follow very carefully. I am concerned here with the substance after it has been dry for well over 24 hours, and over the course of years. 

[Paul-in-SF]

Bumping this one time just in case someone who has some information or insight might have missed it the first time. 

[Monophoto]

Paul

 

I really know very little about flocking, but I can offer three related comments:

 

1.  In the woodturning community, a term that gets a lot of attention is 'food safe' as it applies to finishing materials.  The basic idea is that some finishes could release potentially toxic compounds if food were to come in contact with the finished item.  There are basically two schools of thought - one leads folks to insist only using finishes that are assured to be non-toxic - which itself is a problem because toxicity is often more a matter of the widely varying allergic reactions that individuals might have rather than some generic property of a finish.  The other is the notion that once finishes have fully cured, they essentially become inert and benign.  Applying this to your question, there are two factors to consider.  One is that it may not be possible to generalize about whether the adhesive might damage your pens because that could be a function of which pens you have and the materials from which they are made.  Second, I suspect that if there is any reaction between the adhesive and a particular pen, it arises as a result of volatile organic compounds (VOCs - gasses) released from the adhesive, and I would expect that offgassing would taper off significantly, and potentially cease altogether after the adhesive has fully cured.  To be cautious, however, I would allow quite a bit of time for that to occur - weeks rather than the minutes or hours that is advertised as the nominal cure time of the adhesive.

 

2.  Many years ago I made a pen box using MDF as the substrate, with grooves cut into the MDF with a router.  Rather than attempt flocking, I opted to like the box with felt that I glued in using ordinary PVA glue.  Obviously, that meant that I had to cut the grooves a bit wider to allow for the thickness of the felt.  Looking back, and thinking about your question, I suspect that if there were any potential offgassing risks associated with my box, it was due to VOCs released from the MDF substrate rather than from the PVA glue.

 

3.  While I agree that the question you have raised is worth asking, I suspect the bottom line is that pens have to be made to withstand handling by users, and the oils released by skin might, in the long term, be more harmful that potential VOCs released from boxes in which they are stored.

[Paul-in-SF]

Thank you, all good points. I am looking at flocking specifically to conserve horizontal space over using fabrics like velvet. Perhaps I need to do some real-life tests to see how much space I would actually save. I was considering using little vertical dividers to make pen slots rather than grooves to hold the pens. Maybe grooves would be better. May I ask what width your grooves were, and what space between the grooves?

 

The pen material I am most worried about is celluloid, as I have some vintage pens and at least one modern pen that are made of that material, and it seems to be regarded as more vulnerable to such influences than modern resins, for example. 

[Monophoto]

My box has 3/4" wide rectangular grooves with 1/4" spaces between grooves.  After lining the box with felt, each pen slot is an ample 5/8" wide (ample in the sense that there is at least that much space, but actually a bit more since the felt is compressible. 

 

Actually, my box is a recycled cedar cigar box.  I could have made my own box, but I was able to buy a cigar box for next to nothing.  So all I had to make was the felt-lined insert.

[rickap]

This is my experience with flocking. It is my experience. Yours may be different.

 

Back in the early days of the iPod I bought one with the click wheel. I bought a case for it that enclosed the body with cutouts for the screen and the click wheel. A few months later I took the iPod out of the case and the entire face, which had been glossy, was dull. It looked like it had been expertly sanded to a dull, smooth finish. The flocking did that.

 

I considered the flocked trays available on the market but decided to not use them. So here is a link to a thread where user  my63 has a solution.

 

 

Either way I hope you end up with a great storage case.

 

   Rick

 

 

[Paul-in-SF]

Rick, thanks for the link to that discussion, it has a lot of food for thought.

 

I have never had any worries about possible damage caused by the flocked pen trays I have been using (from gopens.com and from Pendora). I wonder if the flocking material is the same as your iPod case.

 

I have one commercially-made pen chest that has slots about the size of Monophoto's, lined with velvet. I just realized I could pull out the dividers, and it would actually a fairly easy thing to reproduce. The bottom and sides of the drawers are lined with one piece of velvet. The divider insert consists of a top piece, a bottom piece, and 11 dividers that are joined to the top and bottom with simple lap joints (they aren't even glued for some reason, they just sit there, the joints are on the bottom so you can't see them at all). Putting the velvet on the top and bottom pieces would be a bit fussy, but there is the advantage of not needing to do the glue work inside the drawer, each piece can sit on a desk while I work on it. This is looking more attractive as an alternative to flocking. 

[Paul-in-SF]

Rick, thanks for the link to that discussion, it has a lot of food for thought.

 

I have never had any worries about possible damage caused by the flocked pen trays I have been using (from gopens.com and from Pendora). I wonder if the flocking material is the same as your iPod case.

 

I have one commercially-made pen chest that has slots about the size of Monophoto's, lined with velvet. I just realized I could pull out the dividers, and it would actually a fairly easy thing to reproduce. The bottom and sides of the drawers are lined with one piece of velvet. The divider insert consists of a top piece, a bottom piece, and 11 dividers that are joined to the top and bottom with simple lap joints (they aren't even glued for some reason, they just sit there, the joints are on the bottom so you can't see them at all). Putting the velvet on the top and bottom pieces would be a bit fussy, but there is the advantage of not needing to do the glue work inside the drawer, each piece can sit on a desk while I work on it. This is looking more attractive as an alternative to flocking.