First Turned Pen

June 29, 2014

After purchasing a metal lathe a little over a month ago and having it sit idly by in the corner of my room, I finally found some time away from university to have a hand at turning my first pen.

Firstly, a big thank you to all the users on this subforum who contributed their knowledge in threads wide and varied on matters of turning. I musn't forget Richard (richardandtracy) who answered each and every of my mundane PMs with the most sage advice!

Apologies for my terrible photos, unfortunately a camera is about as intuitive to me as using a cross-slide that apparently has no zeroing function!

It certainly isn't perfect, and I made a number of mistakes and poor aesthetic decisions (one can see that I was a bit too enthusiastic with the tap while threading the cap!) while trying to become accustomed to turning pens.

I think my experience can be summed up in the following negative and positive:

Negative: threading/drilling when the resulting wall diameter is less than 1 mm (especially the section tenon), with the wall then cracking. I have a box full of broken sections to remind me to take care!
Positive: applying that final coat of 1 micron Micro-Gloss and that final, mirror-like polish that results.

Edited June 29, 2014 by dali3464

June 29, 2014

Your first? Great blank. Very nice proportion. You did go deep threading the cap and the cap lip is thin. Your finish is flawless in these pics. Can you post a pic capped? I'd say for a first try you are far ahead of the curve. Good job.

Paul

June 29, 2014

Congratulations !

Thats a very nice result taken in account it was your first made pen!

As for the cracking of the thin section threads during threading: your should leave the central smaller and enlarge it to its final diameter after cutting the threads

Francis

June 29, 2014

Great job -- it does not look like a "first pen", by the way.

I have a box full of broken sections to remind me to take care!

Me too. Broken-off tenons, drilled a smidge too large so the internal threads don't hold the feed housing, front holes and back holes slightly off-centre ... I keep them all hoping they'll remind me to do it right in future, but each time I make a pen there seems to be another one added to the collection.

June 29, 2014

Congrats on your first complete pen! It looks great! If you can tap a wall that thin and not have it crack on you, you have the magic touch!

June 29, 2014

You really did a good job, the pen looks fantastic, did you use C/C or some other filling system and how hard was it to put in? Also about the threading in the cap, I've never made a pen but I know that sometimes if a cap can be forced down too far it can damage the nib, so have you thought about a way to prevent that from happening hear (it looks to me like the cap could be screwed down farther than anticipated and squash the nib), I would maybe try to put a stop where the cap threads should have ended (some epoxy over the threads you don't want used maybe?)

Edited June 29, 2014 by WirsPlm

June 29, 2014

Very nice pen. I would have never guessed it was your first.

- Grayling

June 29, 2014

You really did a good job, the pen looks fantastic, did you use C/C or some other filling system and how hard was it to put in? Also about the threading in the cap, I've never made a pen but I know that sometimes if a cap can be forced down too far it can damage the nib, so have you thought about a way to prevent that from happening hear (it looks to me like the cap could be screwed down farther than anticipated and squash the nib), I would maybe try to put a stop where the cap threads should have ended (some epoxy over the threads you don't want used maybe?)

A better solution is to make a step-profile inside the cap that allows the nib to continue but hits -- and therefore stops -- the front corner of the section.

June 30, 2014

Your first? Great blank. Very nice proportion. You did go deep threading the cap and the cap lip is thin. Your finish is flawless in these pics. Can you post a pic capped? I'd say for a first try you are far ahead of the curve. Good job.

Paul

I'm very pleased with how the body and section turned out. The cap? Much less so. You're right, the lip is fairly thin. I think it sitting at around 1.1mm at the moment, certainly nothing I would want to drop. Another problem is that the cap is just about ~15-20mm too long. When capped, its length is almost that of the body. I'll take a picture once the sun finally sojourns across the sky and hits that point when the workshop is no longer lit by a dim lightbulb!

Congratulations !
Thats a very nice result taken in account it was your first made pen!
As for the cracking of the thin section threads during threading: your should leave the central smaller and enlarge it to its final diameter after cutting the threads
Francis

Thank you very much for the compliments Francis! I've always admired your pens and your gems of advice scattered across multiple threads in this forum were very much appreciated. That probably explains why the section tenon tended to crack/rip off when I tried drilling it after threading the exterior. I usually approached it with a small center drill, then went ahead with the 7mm drill immediately. Doesn't always work out so well! I tried preventing the wall from cracking by making a small collar (from some rubbished blank) that I threaded onto the section. It did work, but only half the time. I'll definitely use your approach.

Congrats on your first complete pen! It looks great! If you can tap a wall that thin and not have it crack on you, you have the magic touch!

Thanks Renee! I have to say I was alternating between utter focus and sheer panic while threading the cap, wasn't sure when the acrylic was going to crack! I find using dies more troublesome, but I think that speaks more of the quality of the die I purchased: I have the excellent US-made taps from Mike Redburn for the nib unit and cap threads, but the tenon die I purchased off E-bay, and to say the least they're truly awful and already rusting. I think the main problem is that both ends of the die are tapered, so you can't reverse it and thread it directly against a shoulder. I'm planning to purchase some replacements from Victornet and save myself any future grief!

You really did a good job, the pen looks fantastic, did you use C/C or some other filling system and how hard was it to put in? Also about the threading in the cap, I've never made a pen but I know that sometimes if a cap can be forced down too far it can damage the nib, so have you thought about a way to prevent that from happening hear (it looks to me like the cap could be screwed down farther than anticipated and squash the nib), I would maybe try to put a stop where the cap threads should have ended (some epoxy over the threads you don't want used maybe?)

It's just a bog-standard CC-filler, although I'm drawing up some plans and acquiring the material to make a plunger-filler: I can't resist the thrill of experimentation! It was fairly simple to put the converter in, but I did take my time and draw up some very basic (and quite unskilled mind you) drawings of the section and how I was going to go about it. The most important part was a tenon that tightly snugs against the base of the converter to ensure that it doesn't dismount while in the barrel.

But duncsuss is right about preventing the nib from hitting the bottom of the cap, that's how I approached it at least, as you can see from this drawing:

The JoWo #6 nib has a maximum width of 8.8mm along its profile while the base of the section has a diameter of 12mm, so I drilled a 9mm hole near to the end of the cap and then I enlarged the opening of the hole (to facilitate the 13mm cap threading) and stopped at 27mm, which is the length of the section, the threads and the cap lip. This ensures that the base of the section hits the step before the nib hits the bottom of the cap.

Edited June 30, 2014 by dali3464

June 30, 2014

Great job for #1! If you need thin walls in the future then boring will give it to you. Also, single pointing threads will let you thread thin walls as well. I've done some tiny acrylic pens where the cap wall thickness is .80mm and the threaded part of the barrel is .62mm. Of course thread pitch is small (.5mm) to make that work. I also have made threaded acrylic liners for my metal pens that have wall thicknesses of around .50mm. What I'm saying is don't necessarily let a thin wall design stop you. There are ways!

Again, looks great!

Cheers,

Rich

June 30, 2014

The JoWo #6 nib has a maximum width of 8.8mm along its profile while the base of the section has a diameter of 12mm, so I drilled a 9mm hole near to the end of the cap and then I enlarged the opening of the hole (to facilitate the 13mm cap threading) and stopped at 27mm, which is the length of the section, the threads and the cap lip. This ensures that the base of the section hits the step before the nib hits the bottom of the cap.

You reminded me of something that once caught me out: the widest span of the the nib "wings" isn't guaranteed to lie on the axis of the section. Meaning a hole with diameter 9mm might not be large enough to receive a nib with maximum width of 8.8mm -- if that 8.8mm is a chord across the circle, not a diameter.

(My math says if the widest span is raised 1mm off the centerline, the wings will scrape the inside walls of a 9mm hole.)

It's just something to watch out for.