White and Black Acrylic Fountain pen

[ldb2000]

This is a White and Black acrylic kitless fountain pen . I bought a bag of these front sections from a guy on ebay and built this pen around them . I had to make my own tap for the threads on the section because it's an oddball size . The nib on these sections is one of the nicest writing nibs I have ever tried , it just glides across the paper and lays down a nice wet line and is somewhere between fine and medium .
The clip is a Waterman clip that I got in another deal and the two accent bands are brass tubing cut and swaged into the barrel and then polished and gold plated . The blank is one of my Crystal Ice blanks , these blanks are kind of hard to photograph due to how bright they are .
This is my best pen to date I think , and definitely the best writing pen I have ever made .

As always , comments are welcome .

 

[workinforwood]

I don't know that it's your best pen to date, but it certainly does rock. It carries that vintage feel, with the threaded barrel and double ring centerband with resin at the end. Like the taper closed end that snugs the cap back on with ease. It's really well executed Butch.

 

[cnirenberg]

Butch,
I am going to agree 100% with Jeff on this one. I like it a lot, it's very classy. Slick looking Crystal Ice blank.

 

[NewLondon88]

My eye is telling me to look for a piece of metal at the transition from the
lower barrel to the nib. But the whole top looks perfect. And the white
with gold is bright and crisp. It looks like a very comfortable pen. Nice!

 

[altaciii]

Great looking pen and blank. Great job.

 

[artme]

I like it!! The trasnlucent nature of the material adds a bit of mystery.

 

[ldb2000]

Thanks guys . I wish I could have gotten a better set of pictures but the blank is just one of those that glows when any light is put on it , so to show the black the white becomes over exposed , even playing with the gama correction I can't tone it down enough .
I was going for a vintage look like the pens from the 40's and 50's . The Sheaffers and the Parkers from that era are some of the most awesome looking and timeless designs and I took my design cues from them . The double center bands serve two functions , one is as an accent to the looks of the design and the other is a reinforcement to the barrel to prevent it from cracking when it is posted the same as the vintage pens . I also wanted this pen to have some shape to it so I put a gentle taper to the cap and made the pen postable . This pen is incredibly light weight since there is almost no metal in or on it and is balanced either with the cap posted or not .

 

[Rollerbob]

Butch, not much else to say but, INCREDIBLE!!

 

[papaturner]

That is one awesome pen......Has to be my favorite of all that you have posted.

 

[Stevej72]

Great looking pen!

 

[Texatdurango]

The nib is a bit long for my taste but overall I like the pen. Could you expand a bit on the gold plaiting, have you found a good source for plating small items?

 

[mbroberg]

Very nice Butch! I like it alot!

 

[Jgrden]

I love it. Great job.

 

[ldb2000]

Thanks for the kind words everyone . This was an interesting build , I was trying really hard to get that vintage look and I think it worked . The most important thing about this pen is how it writes . Ugly or not these nibs are THE best nibs I have ever written with . I took one apart to see if I can make a new section for them but it don't look like I can , they are molded and the nib and feed lock into a shaped hole in the section . I have a few of them so I will be making more pens with them .
George , I am using something called "Hardened Gold Gel" electroplate . A friend that does car detailing at my shop gave me a small amount of it . He uses it for gold plating car emblems and trim . He says it holds up well if you use the system , which consists of a cleaning solution , a hard nickel plating solution , an activator solution and the gold gel solution . He says it starts about $1200 for the entire system and the gold solution costs $100 to $220 depending on the size container and type of solution . I used just my 2 amp power supply and electrodes from my regular electroplating setup with the gold solution he gave me and it seems to work well . We will see how it holds up to daily use .

 

[mickr]

you suceeded in the "vintage" look...really fine work

 

[rexl]

That's an awesome pen, Butch. Can you elaborate on how you swaged those two bands into place?

 

[broitblat]

Great looking pen. Very elegant and impressive looking.

-Barry

 

[JJturns]

That is a beautiful pen Butch. I really like the gold touch. Do you know who made the nib?

JJ

 

[CaptG]

That is one sweet looking pen. Keep up the top notch work and keep showing us your creations.

 

[ldb2000]

Thanks again everyone .

Rex , I used my collet chuck to swage the rings in place . The rings are some brass tube with a wall thickness of .014 .

JJ , I really wish I knew who made the nibs , they write so nicely . The nib itself looks like a nib made by a German company but the feeds don't look like the kind of quality that that company uses . I think they look rather cheaply made , injection molded to fit the nib and feed . It's a nice fit but just looks cheap . They seem to be made for machine assembly , the nib fits on the feed with a shoulder to insure correct placement and the feed fits the holder the same way . It's one way to make sure that the sections will all be assembled the exact same way to the same tolerance .

I'm pushing my skill level to the very edge of what I can do just to see where I can take it all . So far it has worked out in the end but there have been some spectacular catastrophic failures , I'm glad I always wear my face shield :redface:
Still to come is a Twindows piston filler , button filler with a hooded nib and a lever filler with a hooded nib and an ink window but I'm not sure which will be done first .

 

[SKEETERPROV]

Thats got real class...