Need some advice re stabilized burl

[bmachin]

Hi All,

I'm making a kitless fountain pen for a friend from stabilized cherry burl.

My original plan was to make a liner for the cap from ebonite or alumilite to protect against the inevitable leakage from the nib that will find its way through the probably inevitable voids in the burl. In the meantime, I was planning to leave the interior of the barrel unprotected.

The, dangerously, I had a thought. "Is burl generally strong enough for a 14mm diameter tube with a 2.5mm wall thickness?" I think that I could easily do it with straight grain, but have no feel at all for the stabilized burl.

Any thoughts or educated guesses?

Thanks.

Bill

 

[More4dan]

Bill, what are your plans for threading? I would be more concerned with the ability of cherry burl to have reliable long lasting threads. You could create the liner with material that would allow threading and solve both problems.

Danny

 

[duncsuss]

I would not risk it with burl (even stabilized burl), just as I would not risk it with softer woods (olivewood, for example).

What I'd do: make a "fully lined wooden pen", alternatively called "an ebonite pen with wooden bindes" (the pen fanciers' name for a sleeve that fits over the pen barrel.)

 

[bmachin]

No worries there Dan. I haven't figured out how to thread straight grained blackwood yet much less any kind of burl. This will have either ebonite or bronze threads.

One of the reasons for trying to avoid the liner is that my friend wants a postable cap which means a long taper with a fairly small small diameter at the top of the barrel. Although since I'm going with a 14mm cap thread there ought to be plenty of room to work with. If nothing else, I could always just go with thin wall brass or aluminum tubing.

I think that a liner of some sort is probably the way to go.

Duncan, your post came up while I was replying to Dan. Thus this Edit. I Think than I a basically going to end up doing as you suggest. However, the ebonite pen will be small enough in diameter that i will have room to taper the barrel to make the cap postable.

This is going to be quite a project. I'm making this for a guy who converted my Micro Mark mini lathe tailstock quill to lever feed. At the start of the project we were barely acquaintances and it was going to be a cash deal. A few hours in he said he'd like to have a cherry pen. He probably would have been happy with a kit. He's a ex navy machinist with a PhD who used to teach machining, CNC, etc at the college level.

So anyway, lots of bronze (section, clip, accents), expensive blanks, and just kind of winging it. Plus, we're way more than just friends now.

Thanks for the help

Bill

 

[duncsuss]

One of the reasons for trying to avoid the liner is that my friend wants a postable cap which means a long taper with a fairly small small diameter at the top of the barrel.

That's not the only way of making a cap postable. You could thread the end of the barrel and the cap could screw onto it.

Here's an example -- my Montegrappa Symphony pen:

 

[bmachin]

Duncan,

I've thought about that, and may actually mock it up and go that way if I can shorten the section and bury the cap threads deep enough.

I guess I'm just spoiled by vintage and high end pens whose lengths hardly change when posted. (Don't get me wrong, I know that the Symphony is both vintage and high end and having seen yours, I now want one. Maybe at the DC or Ohio pen show this year).

Pelican does something similar with their piston fillers in that the filler knob is just slightly smaller in diameter than the barrel so that it fits inside the cap threads which are buried close to 1/2" deep inside the cap.

Thanks for the tip.

Bill

 

[More4dan]

This one is an aluminum core with Walnut skin. 11mm cap threads and #5 JOWO.


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app

 

[bmachin]

OK guys. No promises, but maybe I should start thinking a little bit outside the traditional 1930's box. NO PROMISES!!

Bill