Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

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richardandtracy
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Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by richardandtracy »

I have been trying to put together a fountain pen that uses a number of techniques, the idea is to make one that it's hard for anyone else to do, that way I won't be competing for sales with other custom pen makers.

So, the brief was for the pen to be relatively simple to make, look attractive, use the same nib unit as a good kit pen, be individual, aim at the US$120/£120 market and use techniques that few other people could duplicate.

I have ended up with this prototype:
Image
Image
And the cap detail:
Image

The blue material is fairly transparent acrylic - too transparent for anything other than a prototype, but is useful for seeing where there are problems. The main shape is machined on my metal lathe. The threads are where another technique comes in. Pens require lots & lots of different fine threads. If you buy a tap/die for each, that's horrendously expensive as they usually have to be made to order, so cutting them on a lathe is what most people do. However twin, triple and quad start threads are VERY difficult even for an experienced machinist (and I am far from one of them), and most threads on this pen are multi start. So I have written a program that generates toolpaths for my CNC engraver - meaning that the only thing I have to do is to enter the correct parameters, and use only one cutter to create all the different internal and external threads on the pen.

The Clip and 'CP' inlay decal at the top of the cap was made by a complex and indirect route. First I machined the flat clip shape in 2 parts using the CNC machine into hard wax. This was 15% bigger than I wanted to allow for shrinkage of the clip in the kiln later. Then the 'CP' engraving was machined 0.25mm into the clip with a 0.2mm diameter cutter. After that I poured silicone rubber over the wax to form a mould with a clip shaped recess. Next task was to push Precious Metal Clay (bronze in this case) into the mould, let it dry, assemble the parts and fire in a kiln at 350C for 30 minutes, cool, cover in charcoal, fire at 820C for 40 minutes. After cooling, the [now completely metal] clip was filed, bent to shape, torch blackened to make the engraving black, and then polished. The 'CP' decal was done in an identical method and fired at the same time as the clip.

After all this, I have a pen that is as close as I could hope to being a workable prototype. Have a few things to improve, but that's the idea of a prototype. Pheww. One final job is to polish the good quality nib, as it isn't good enough yet. Pen weight 23.6grams, Cap weight, 9.3 grams. Cap diameter 16mm, Barrel Diameter 14mm. Length capped 130mm, Length uncapped 125mm, Length posted (cap on top of pen) 167mm.

Production pens will use a different material for the body - less transparent & hopefully a more attractive colour - and have a Sterling Silver clip and decal instead of bronze.

Still astonishes me I started off with an 8" rod of plastic & a small lump of heavy brown clay, and ended up with a pen. :?

Regards,

Richard.
http://www.chestnutpens.co.uk
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wendywombat
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by wendywombat »

:applesauce: :applesauce:

Amazing! I like it! I'm in awe of how much it takes to create a pen.

A fair price, too considering the amount of work and time it took to create.

VERY Well Done! :whoop:
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karen4bells
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by karen4bells »

:applesauce: :applesauce: :applesauce: :applesauce: very impressive!!! I think it looks amazing and it's so nice to read the steps it took to get from start to finish!! Best of luck!!
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rcperryls
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by rcperryls »

karen4bells wrote::applesauce: :applesauce: :applesauce: :applesauce: very impressive!!! I think it looks amazing and it's so nice to read the steps it took to get from start to finish!! Best of luck!!
I agree!

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fccs
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by fccs »

It's really beautiful! I love fountain pens and never realized how much work goes into making them. You're an artist!!
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lavenderbee
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by lavenderbee »

That is really a great pen, Richard. We hadn't heard from you for a while & guessed you were busy pen making as you mentioned before you had several orders. Did not realise, the same as those above, that so much went into the making of a beautiful pen. Look forward to seeing the model in the materials you mentioned. It will be terrific I am sure.

Thank you for sharing this with us, & good luck with sales of the pen - you deserve to do well as you have put a lto of hard work into it & it is sure to be extremely well made. :whoop: :whoop: :applesauce: :applesauce: :D .
lavenderbee :-)


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richardandtracy
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by richardandtracy »

Thanks for all your comments. It is a lot of hard work to design a new pen that feels right. This one does. It has had to go through a number of iterations - I'm on the third finial, second barrel and second nib section - but it is now ready to be taken to market. All told, I suppose I've had about 60 hours work developing it after completing the initial CAD models and drawings.

I've also had problems with my cnc controller PC. The original computer had the printer port section of the motherboard die, the spare lasted 30 seconds before it too died, and the last resort PC had a virus that switched the PC off after 3 minutes - too short a time to do a virus check using the PC itself. I ended up having to borrow a usb HDD caddy that allowed the hard drive to be used as an external drive on another PC before I could virus check it. Because the cnc software needs Windows XP, a desktop PC and a motherboard printer port, no anti virus software (which would absorb processing power when the PC should be concentrating on telling an expensive machine tool what to do), suitable controller PC's are now getting rather long in the tooth, die quickly in workshop conditions, and spares are getting close to unobtainable.

As a consequence, I have been a little scarce here, and with no successful stitching yet on my next 2 projects (got permission for my Luis Royo project this morning :whoop: ). I have tended to be accessing the web by a TY*£"HJKF£"!!!! awful android tablet, and due to the difficulty of typing on it, I have visited more than I have contributed recently. Don't get me wrong, the tablet is good at what it does, it's just that most decent computers have a keyboard & mouse for very good reasons - they are efficient & competent ways of entering data. A tablet is good for passive consuming of the web or reading books/watching videos/playing simpleminded games, not really any use for anything more interactive.

Regards,

Richard.
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wendywombat
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by wendywombat »

I've got a Samsung Galaxy Tablet. When I bought it I also bought a case and blu-tooth keyboard to mate up with it. Makes life a Whole lot easier. :dance:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TECHGEAR%C2%AE- ... laxy+tab+a" target="_blank"

Progress in the pens, then? Great news! :applesauce: :applesauce:

BTW I noticed that on your first post you said that you were aiming for the $120/£120 mark...have to say that these don't equate to the same value! :tizzy: Don't sell yourself short, Richard! :wink:

*edit to add link *
Last edited by wendywombat on Tue Jan 05, 2016 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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richardandtracy
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by richardandtracy »

Wendy,

I know $120 & £120 are not the same, but that is the usual conversion rate on anything sold on both sides of the Atlantic. It tends to cover postage, VAT and import duties into the EU, and is a pretty good approximation of reality as opposed to what we'd prefer to see. Europe is around 50% more expensive than the US for almost everything, and when selling into the US, competition means that EU goods have to go through the opposite and less advantageous exchange rate conversion.

Regards,

Richard.

Edited to add: Last year I bought a little statue designed by artist 'Wei Ho' in California, produced by Yamato Toys USA. The sale price was $209 (free postage in the US), and after postage to the UK, import duty & the charge made by the Post Office for collecting the import duty, it came to £208 and a few pence. In that case, a 1:1 exchange rate is about what it cost.
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by wendywombat »

Just a little Wombat worry so think of it as that!! :D
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Carole
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Re: Fountain Pen Prototype - At Last

Post by Carole »

karen4bells wrote::applesauce: :applesauce: :applesauce: :applesauce: very impressive!!! I think it looks amazing and it's so nice to read the steps it took to get from start to finish!! Best of luck!!
Couldn't put it better myself :D
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