Durable pen finishes

A. Nitrocellulose resins are very old and not very good over prolonged times. Furthermore, they can be explosive. Why not consider acrylic varnishes, which are much more stable and safer.

A. Something you may want to try is wood stabilizing. For a small setup you basically take a mason jar (canning jar) fill it with a thin acrylic resin, urethane, etc...place your wood in there, heat it up, draw a vacuum on it (you can use a brake bleeder pump) the vacuum will draw the air out of the pores and fill it with the sealer. After your done stabilizing it, it will work very consistently (like a micarta or hard acrylic), won't warp, shrink, crack, it'll be waterproof and take a nice polish, etc. extremely dense or oily woods won't stabilize good (like desert ironwood or cocobolo) but other woods like maple, zebrawood, boxelder, etc stabilize very well. In most cases it makes the grain pattern much more vibrant. You can purchase already stabilized woods but they are quite expensive. Do a net search for wood stabilizing (I did knifemaking + wood+stabilizing) and you should come up with several sites explaining step by step how to do it.