Cocobolo on modified Cigars

[hilltopper46]

Three pens back from the engraver and assembled and ready to ship to the customer. The wood is nicely figured cocobolo - dark, but nicely figured. Pen is a modified cigar with titanium gold plating. CA finish on the wood.

 

[philb]

Nice group!
Especially like the modified look

 

[Acelectric]

Cocobolo is beautiful wood. Very nice looking pens

 

[RMayoIII]

I like how the centerband has been modified. Looks classy! Nice job on them

 

[walshjp17]

The modified CB gives the pens a much more classic look -- especially with the cocobolo. Well done.

 

[stonepecker]

Very Nice Work. Three to be very proud of.
Personally, I like the lightest one because I can see the 'grain' of the wood.

 

[BayouPenturner]

nice job on the finish, pen modification makes them look better

 

[Mack C.]

Would you care to share your method of modifying the Cigar pen?

 

[Brooks803]

Awesome mod! Love the clean look of it.

 

[hilltopper46]

Would you care to share your method of modifying the Cigar pen?

It's really not very complicated... and I think that others have posted it here previously...

1. Cut a new custom bottom tube. Length of this tube is the length of the lower tube plus the width of the black ring that goes next to the writing tip. You can purchase the 10mm tubes from PSI, or some of their resellers.
2. Use the bottom (long) tube for the top barrel.
3. Throw away the black ring off the coupler for the writing tip, the tip will screw all the way on.
4. Throw away the plated ring at the center band
5. Mount the black bushing that goes in the top in a chuck in the headstock and use a #U drill (or similar) to drill it out until the black ring falls off. At assembly time, the piece that is left in the chuck gets pressed into the lower end of the upper barrel to take up space between the transmission and the tube in the upper barrel.
6. When turning the barrels, instead of using the large bushing for the center band of the upper barrel, use the same size bushing as the center end of the lower barrel.
7. After turning the barrels to size, remove the center bushings and replace them with spare writing-end or clip-end bushings and use the skew as a scraper to ease the sharp edge of the barrel just slightly. Sanding will complete the rounding over of this edge.

Note of interestn these cocobolo barrels, I wet sand them using DNA rather than dry sand them, then let them sit for a few hours before completing the CA finish. A wipe with acetone before finishing is a good practice a well.

 

[hilltopper46]

Very Nice Work. Three to be very proud of.
Personally, I like the lightest one because I can see the 'grain' of the wood.

The funny thing is that these three pens came out of the same piece of wood. I cut the blanks myself from a smallish plank I bought a few years ago. They came out of the plank side-by-side with the same grain orientation in each pen. But, as you say, the color of the wood varies considerably between the pens.