Some projects just present themselves. I saw a picture of a shopmade pen online, figured I could make a nicer one. Was looking for a project to do during the holiday and had a nice piece of walnut that I sealed in wax years ago. Couple of hours later I had the design ready.
Not everything went according to plan, I didn’t had time to order the right tap for the project, wanted to use an 8mm trapezium tap with a 3mm pitch. After a day of trying to make one without proper tool steel and without a proper forge, I gave up and just made it M8 thread. At that time I also didn’t had stainless steel lying around, so I just used cold rolled round stock.
The trickiest thing was by far the threaded part, I wanted a smooth enable/disable action with a noticeable stop, while still being able to unscrew it all the way to replace the ink (Parker QuinkFlow). I ended up making 4 slots and making the front part a larger diameter, this gives the end stop and spring action.
Finished with a couple of coats of CA + linseed oil.
Next time:
- Use stainless, although it’s a lot harder to machine, for something that gets a lot of handling you do want to rely on a lacquer finish to prevent it from rusting.
- Use one continuous piece of wood, I now used 2 parallel parts in the same block of walnut which ended up giving completely different colours.
- Simulate the center of mass, the pen ended up being quite heavy, which isn’t a problem on it’s own, but a lot of the weight is at the top of the pen, which isn’t as comfortable as it could have been.
