Did my first Elegant American pen today... I like it and even more important my wife liked it.. and she is really critical of pen designs... LOL
HOWEVER, before doing it I read the directions the other day and noticed something interesting and called Jim at Berea to discuss it..
The directions state that the mechanism assembly must be even with the bottom of the upper barrel.. MMMMMM then I thought to myself "Self, I need to find out more about this direction".. after discussing it with Jim I realized that if you are not extremely careful about trimming the pen blank after glue up you are going to have a big problem. If the barrel is made too short the mechanism is going to stick out the bottom and the center ring is not going to mate properly and you are going to have a gap.. .a very unsightly and ugly gap..
Taking this under advisement, I trimmed my blanks very carefully (I thought), turned the pen (Pics will be along later today) and went to the assembly bench... put together the mechanism and measured it.. then measured the upper barrell... Upper barrel .012 too short... don't sound like much, but enough to leave an unsightly gap... OK totally ticked at myself.. now what.. Then I looked at the mechanism and realized that the brass section that the finial screws into has a tapered opening.. giving you a section that can be sanded to length.. a little 400 grit paper on the assembly bench, rub sand the upper part of the mechanism and measure until .008 shorter than the barrel.. BINGO.. worked like a dream...
If I had not discussed this with Jim at Berea, I might have ruined a nice pen. This is also a situation where the directions are really not clear enough to the dangers of over trimming the blank.. I think that the companies take it for granted that we all just barely kiss the tubes.. and those of us with experience do try to barely kiss the tubes.. but what about the newbies or what if the tube was just .010 short from the manufacturer.. we have all seen that problem..
Think I am going to call Jim back tomorrow and discuss this.. one of the nice things with doing business with Berea is that you can actually talk to the owner and he will listen and help...
Same as we can actually talk to Nils from CSU... that is what makes both of these companies so great to deal with..
HOWEVER, before doing it I read the directions the other day and noticed something interesting and called Jim at Berea to discuss it..
The directions state that the mechanism assembly must be even with the bottom of the upper barrel.. MMMMMM then I thought to myself "Self, I need to find out more about this direction".. after discussing it with Jim I realized that if you are not extremely careful about trimming the pen blank after glue up you are going to have a big problem. If the barrel is made too short the mechanism is going to stick out the bottom and the center ring is not going to mate properly and you are going to have a gap.. .a very unsightly and ugly gap..
Taking this under advisement, I trimmed my blanks very carefully (I thought), turned the pen (Pics will be along later today) and went to the assembly bench... put together the mechanism and measured it.. then measured the upper barrell... Upper barrel .012 too short... don't sound like much, but enough to leave an unsightly gap... OK totally ticked at myself.. now what.. Then I looked at the mechanism and realized that the brass section that the finial screws into has a tapered opening.. giving you a section that can be sanded to length.. a little 400 grit paper on the assembly bench, rub sand the upper part of the mechanism and measure until .008 shorter than the barrel.. BINGO.. worked like a dream...
If I had not discussed this with Jim at Berea, I might have ruined a nice pen. This is also a situation where the directions are really not clear enough to the dangers of over trimming the blank.. I think that the companies take it for granted that we all just barely kiss the tubes.. and those of us with experience do try to barely kiss the tubes.. but what about the newbies or what if the tube was just .010 short from the manufacturer.. we have all seen that problem..
Think I am going to call Jim back tomorrow and discuss this.. one of the nice things with doing business with Berea is that you can actually talk to the owner and he will listen and help...
Same as we can actually talk to Nils from CSU... that is what makes both of these companies so great to deal with..
