The Care & Feeding of Fountain Pens

[Bill Baumbeck]

Hi Folks,

Jim Heusinger, owner of Berea Hardwoods, sent me some informative instructions on how to care for a fountain pen. I thought I would pass it along to all of you.

http://www.arizonasilhouette.com/Pen_Kit_Instructions.htm . A PDF version will be made available sometime soon.

See you in Provo!

Bill Baumbeck
P.O. Box 11170
Yuma, AZ 85366-9170
928-329-8039 weekday's 4:00PM to 9:00PM & Saturday 10:00AM-8:00PM (Pacific Standard Time)
Email: azsil@mindspring.com
Web: www.arizonasilhouette.com

 

[Randy_]

Bill: That's good information. I expect there would be a few less folks with fountain pen problems if they had had that article!!

 

[DCBluesman]

Bill--I see that page is noted as being copyright by AS and Berea. Anyway we can get permission to use the wording?

 

[MDWine]

Yep, my question exactly. It would be nice just to pretty that up for printing!

 

[Tom Stephens]

Originally posted by Bill Baumbeck
<br />Hi Folks,

Jim Heusinger, owner of Berea Hardwoods, sent me some informative instructions on how to care for a fountain pen. I thought I would pass it along to all of you.

http://www.arizonasilhouette.com/Pen_Kit_Instructions.htm . A PDF version will be made available sometime soon.

See you in Provo!

Bill Baumbeck
P.O. Box 11170
Yuma, AZ 85366-9170
928-329-8039 weekday's 4:00PM to 9:00PM & Saturday 10:00AM-8:00PM (Pacific Standard Time)
Email: azsil@mindspring.com
Web: www.arizonasilhouette.com

I guess I don't understand why anyone would provide this information and then not expect you to use it. It could only improve sales of his fountain pen kits if we could provide some version of this with a fountain pen sale. I would <b>not</b> use it if I had to put AS and Berea on it. I do not need to provide my customers with the source of my material. That could only cause problems with pricing.
I would like to believe that our suppliers would not mind if we used their pictures of their products for sales purposes. Trying to guess what customers like in a pen is very difficult at best. If I can show them pictures of some of the styles that I could make, I might make a sale that I otherwise could not. It is not practical to make one pen of every style in every type of material for a customer top look at. If my sales increase, then my purchases from my suppliers increase. That should be good for the suppliers and us.
Tom
Branchport, NY

 

[Darley]

Here's another informative instructions.

http://nibs.com/PenMaintenance.htm

 

[RPM]

Tom,
I thought the same thing, but since the photos on the CSUSA website were copywrited, I emailed them for permission to use in an e catalog I was planning. They responded promptly and indicated they would be happy for me to use them...for a price. The cost was only a few dollars per shot, but it really surprised me.
Richard

 

[Old Griz]

Tom, why not just make up your own card for pen care and fountain pen care like some of us did.. you can use some of the ideas that Berea have provided, just don't quote them directly....
See my response to Richard about using pics from the catalogs.. As for making one pen of each type in each material, I would not do that either, however, I do show pics of the type of pens I make, each in a different material and then have a separate page showing what the materials look like..

Richard, why not just use the pics of the pens that you make to show customers, that is what I do for my website... Your photographs look good I would much rather my customer see the work that I am actually doing than work that was done by someone else...
I really don't know why it should surprise you that a company would want to be reimbursed for work that they have paid to have done... They had to pay someone (either on staff or an outside photographer) to do the pictures.

 

[RPM]

Griz,
I agree with what you said and thats what I ended up doing. My post was meant to flag folks on the realities of copyrights. The catalog that I ended up with using my own photos reflects my work and my customers know what to expect. Sorry for the confusion in my post.
Richard

 

[Thumbs]

<b>Griz</b> and <b>Rich</b>, I guess we all have our philosophic differences on this one.

I would certainly expect, especially nowadays, that the copyright holder of an advertisement photo would try to extract more money from it's customers.

But the idea behind advertising is simply to encourage more sales of the bread and butter product! If your retailer (Read penmaker in this case.) can buy more of your product(Kits!) by using your advertisement to sell his product (Pens!), it would seem to make more sense to encourage the use of your photo! Not inhibit its use by trying to extract extra pennies from that same retailer! That's why I initially said <u>philosophic difference</u>, I can understand but not figure the <b>business sense</b> of doing business in this manner......

I suspect a lot of folks wonder about the penurious behaviours of American business today. Is this kind of business really good for business in the long run? You wonder when every quarter somebody is complaining about market losses and more disgruntled customers than ever! Certainly, this may not be the "root cause" but may just be a larger problem indicator.

But, perhaps, our business philosophy is the "Root Cause" of our economic woes.....[] <b>IMHO..FWIW!</b>

I also don't have a problem giving credit to the copyright owner. The average customer looking to buy a pen is not going to go to the kit maker/supplier to buy a pen kit rather than buy from you. The customer who would even consider that is almost certainly gonna be involved in penmaking, sooner or later, anyway; and not showing credit for someone else's work is only going to give that future penmaker the idea that he doesn't have to credit other people's work, too.

 

[Daniel]

Bob,
I like your final point above. In reality any customer of mine that wants to go over me and make there own pen, and I have had a few. not only has my blessing. but in at least one case they got the use of my shop to make it. the others have not actually achieved it yet as the cost is something in the neighborhood of $600 for that first pen. and could very well be more. My one Ex customer still doesn't have a drill press or band saw and at last count had spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000 making 24 pens. Still using some of my equipment. I figure there money ahead not having bought them from me now. or at least resonably close to it.
just trying to ad some real life numbers and experience to the thought of customers simply making there own. It does happen but at the same time. Di I loose out[?] I now have a friend andanouther turner I talk to nearly daily that is trying whole other ideas and sharing them with me. sort of like two minds that can venture in seperate directions. So far I think I'm way out in the lead. already have gotten at least one great idea that I never would have thought of much less tried.

 

[Old Griz]

Daniel, I have to agree with what you say...
I had a woman come up to me yesterday at the farm market... she told me she specifically waited until I had some time to talk.. she used to have a stained glass booth there and now is doing a lot of higher class shows in WV and VA. She just started turning pens and said she could not believe my work (sometimes I have a problem believing what I turned out[}][}][])
She asked if she could pick my brain.. said she had no intention of competing with me.. I told her I did not care if she competed or not.... we had a nice talk, I turned her in the direction of a good AAW Club in her area that has a mentoring program, described how I do things and told her it definately was not always the right way and she would have to develop her own style and techniques...
Will she end up making pens like mine and competing with me, WHO KNOWS, will I be ticked off if she does, NOT AT ALL.. but did I make her happy, I THINK SO.. and more importantly, I made myself feel good by sharing what little knowledge I have with someone else.