Breaking Churchills!

[pmpartain]

Hey,

I made an order of 35 or so Churchill pens for a company. They were given out in mid-January. So far I've had four of the pens break. The plastic part that screws into the cap is breaking off, just inside the metal trim ring. The nib screws into the inside of this piece. 3 of the pens were Sterling silver and 1 was Titanium gold. I watched one guy break his. He dropped it onto carpet and the cap broke off the body. Now the carpet was office type. super short pile and all, but the thing did break from dropping from about 3 to 4 feet high. Anybody else seen this?

 

[Firefyter-emt]

Geesh, I am about as rough as it gets on pens. I have carried one for about 2 months now and I love it (It takes a lot of a pen for me to say that too. In fact, this is the ONLY pen I fully like!) I work as an insurance appraiser in the field and I am outside. Mine has been dropped many times and the cap is removed at least 50 times a day. I wear sweaters a lot and the pen also spends a lot of time in my jeans front pocket.

Very odd, but let us know what you find..

 

[ashaw]

I had the same problem with the El-Grande. I had it happen only to one batch of 5.
Do not know if it was because too much pressure was being applied to coupler when the cap was being put on. But the last batch I made (Over a 1 year ago) I have had no problems. Just brought some churchills to see if I like them.

 

[wdcav1952]

I had the problem with El Grandes also. I made a press block so I could press the coupler in with no pressure on the threads. I have not had any problems since.

 

[Ligget]

I made a Churchill for my wife, she had it a week and I got it back last night broken. It was a Sterling Silver rollerball, the plastic part that screws into the cap broke in two![!]
She put it into her handbag with some other things (purse/wallet etc..), when the pen was removed to be used it was broken.
Never happened with any other pen style before.

 

[pmpartain]

The press block idea is great! On most of the Churchills, the parts press in so easily that you can do it with your fingers. I had thought I needed to use some epoxy to keep the spring from pushing the ends out. On a few, I had to apply a fair amout of pressure. Didn't hear any cracking, but there could be stress cracks that break over time. I don't know how to investigate this though. On the upside, I ruined about 35 pens gluing the cap threads in with CA. CA fumes cankered the nibs, so I have plenty of replacement parts. HA!

 

[Draken]

I also had this problem with an El Grande. Here is the info I received from BHW when I contacted them about my problem. What I think happened in my case is the user over tightened the cap on several occasions, leading to cracking and failure of the plastic part, as it is fairly thin due to the locking threads on the outside and the nib threads on the inside.

The outside of the holder is metal. The inside threaded part is Delrin(TM) which is a Dupont engineering plastic. In the industry this is known as an "oily" plastic which means it can't be glued. Delrin(TM) has some amazing properties such as extreme abrasion resistance and acts like a bearing-smooth sliding. In order to use this as an insert in the metal part we had to design a special holding method which is like a screw thread that locks. This means the Delrin(TM) is locked into the metal part snugly. When pushing the insert into the tub it is possible to fracture the Delrin(TM) which what may have happened in your case.

What we recommend is that you sand a bit inside the brass tube and around the nib holder and us an arbor press to push your parts in.

Hope this helps,
Draken