I haven’t made a status report on the Bamboo project since last November. First of all, I couldn’t resist and had already inked the pen before sending it to Jan. I don’t have many opportunities to use pens in my current work so it took a while to write even a converter worth of ink empty.
Also Jan had to work on his furo. A furo is a kind of humidor where urushi lacquer cures and hardens. The relative humidity in a furo is ideally between 70 – 75% and the temperature is between 20 – 25°C. This allows the lacquer to cure in around 24 hours. Otherwise it can take weeks for the urushi to harden.
Urushi is built up in a lot of layers and after each layer it is sanded down lightly using fine (600P) sandpaper. The first layers are made with a base raw urushi, called seshime urushi. The base layers will be covered entirely so this colour has nothing to do with the final result.
