Classic Black

[Indiana_Parrothead]

Here is a Lotus Fountain Pen in Rhodium & Black Ti with German black ebonite. This pen turned out much harder to do than I thought it would be.

The ebonite turned very easy, the problem was that the shavings came off in long thin strings that wrapped around the blank. I had to stop the lathe after every pass and pull off all the strings.

But the finishing was the hard part. I had turned Japanese ebonite before but I think the German is much harder. I sanded with Abranet to the final shape and diameter on the ends. Then used Micro Mesh through all the grits, stopping the lathe after each grit and sanding the length of the blank to sand out all the circular marks. At this point it did not look very good, with such a high gloss black finish it showed every TINY scratch.

I spent about 15 minutes on the buffer with white diamond and then put it back on the lathe and used Micro Gloss.

It came out pretty good but as you can see from the pictures there are still some very small scratches. Also the picture shows the stock nib, I do have a medium point Heritance Nib that I am going to put on.

I'am I being too critical or is this about the best that can be done with this material?

Thanks for looking
Mike

 

[paintspill]

the pen is gorgeous and i love the kit. don't beat yourself up. black is the hardest to get flawless. looks like you nailed it to me. i try not to turn black anymore just for that reason. (it doesn't help that we are always our worst critics)

 

[CrimsonKeel]

ive made one black pen before and told myself from now on black gets a premium price added to it.
tiny scratches show and the color is never perfect jet black imo.
yours looks really nice though and i do like that kit

 

[turncrazy43]

WOW! Nice.
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