Interesting Plating Issue

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Alex D

Member
Joined
Oct 3, 2013
Messages
103
Location
Redondo Beach, CA
So I was working on a few pens the last couple of weeks as well as setting up my first light tent and actual photo setup (tripod, etc.)

When I was putting these two pens together, both gunmetal Atrax rollerballs, I noticed a tiny blemish on the cap finial of the components that were going into the Curly Koa pen. Since that one was for a customer, I swapped out the finial with the other one on the galaxy pen since that was staying in my personal collection.

When I went to take the photos, I ended up with this:
Curly%2BKoa%2B1%2BSmall.jpg


here's another view:

9hsxOHvT6utaQF9mlo-Wk40dFVEE7fup1OXh-5LsFsU=w858-h586-no


Clearly there was something going on with the cap finial. It seems to have a gold tone to it that doesn't match the rest of the components.

At first I figured it just had something to do with the lighting in the tent. Then, this morning, I pulled it out in natural daylight and the gold tone was still there. I looked at the other pen where I had borrowed the part from and:

Galaxy%2B1%2BSmall.jpg


not quite as obvious, but the center band has the same gold hue.

It's a simple fix, I'll swap the parts back (I can't find whatever the blemish was that I was trying to avoind in the first palce), but I found it interesting. I've done a lot of gunmetal Atrax pens and I've never seen one with the gold tone before.

Once I get the parts swapped and work on the photos some more I'll post them over in SOYP. The glaxy blank has a neat backstroy that deserves it's own post (and a much better picture).

Anyway, just something to keep in mind when swapping parts around!
Alex
 
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