bitshird
Member
A few months ago I made a lathe bit for Jeff Powell, I was joking when I said why don't you send me one of those awesome dragon Blanks. Well a week or so later, two blanks came in the mail. He'd already paid me and I was just joking about the blanks, But he sent me this incredible blank plus on other that is on the agenda. It sat on my desk for the past 2 or 3 months, and I've been trying to figure if it would fit an El Grande.
So first thing the Dragon was too long to fit the cap, second there was way too much color on the bottom of the fire end to cut off, SOOO I extended the length by joining two tubes soldering them together in the top stretching it by a bit over a 1/4 inch and did about the same on the bottom half.
After rounding the blanks, I endured a severe pucker factor of about 8.5 on the sphincter scale while I drilled the cap, since they are done from 2 pieces of wood, and a 13.3 drill leaves a BIG hole. I glued the soldered tubes into the blanks, reamed them with an expansion reamer after they dried for a day and went to work. The pen was finished with 4 coats of thin CA and 5 coats of Med, cured for 24 hours then wet sanded to 1000 and polished with Novus, and fitted with a Heritance SF fine point nib, I'm going to test drive it today. As a point of reference on the length the 3rd photo is my prize El Grande that was a front page pen in June 2008
Any and all comments, critiques and or criticisms, will be appreciated,
Thanks For Looking, it feels good to make pens again :biggrin:
So first thing the Dragon was too long to fit the cap, second there was way too much color on the bottom of the fire end to cut off, SOOO I extended the length by joining two tubes soldering them together in the top stretching it by a bit over a 1/4 inch and did about the same on the bottom half.
After rounding the blanks, I endured a severe pucker factor of about 8.5 on the sphincter scale while I drilled the cap, since they are done from 2 pieces of wood, and a 13.3 drill leaves a BIG hole. I glued the soldered tubes into the blanks, reamed them with an expansion reamer after they dried for a day and went to work. The pen was finished with 4 coats of thin CA and 5 coats of Med, cured for 24 hours then wet sanded to 1000 and polished with Novus, and fitted with a Heritance SF fine point nib, I'm going to test drive it today. As a point of reference on the length the 3rd photo is my prize El Grande that was a front page pen in June 2008
Any and all comments, critiques and or criticisms, will be appreciated,
Thanks For Looking, it feels good to make pens again :biggrin:
