The Cats out of the Bag
I will come clean on the plating issue.
I often get asked by my customers why my gold titanium pens look identical to the upgrade gold pens, where as other manufacturers there is a drastic difference in colour tone between their gold titanium and gold kits. I have managed to tip-toe around the issue for about 4 years now.
I have managed to keep this a trade secret for a few years now but I guess I should explain it to everyone now.
As a pen turner, I have alway used the Gold Titanium finish because of its durability but didn't like using it because it was alway a different tone to the 24ct gold. When you put two together on display, customers would always grab the 24ct finish first because that was the gold they have been use to with jewellery.
Dayacom would use 22ct or 10ct in their high end pens over Gold Titanium because the Gold Titanium looks pretty crappy compared to a real gold finish.
In a meeting in Taiwan with 4 older Gentlemen with over 100 years pen making experience between them, we sat down to iron out specifications for some of my pens. I raised this problem about the Gold Titanium finish.
The solution was easy and very cost effective.
For an additional $0.40 a kit over the straight gold titanium, You put down a gold titanium layer then put an upgrade gold plating layer over the gold titanium. That way while it is in showroom condition the gold looks great.
After the pen is in use, as you wear away the gold layer you slow expose the gold titanium plating underneath. Compared to a usual upgrade gold plating where you expose brass, then the brass will tarnish because there is no protective finish on the brass. This way you get great gold durability without the crappy gold titanium colour.
Hi there,
just a few photos of the roman harvest with suspect plating, the original fault was noticed after a final light hand polich just to remove prints and add an extra gloss. I can only assume that either the non abrasive car polish i used reacted with the epoxy coating/plating or the plating is faulty. To try and improve matters i decided to spend over an hour polishing the hardware to get a uniform finish. Im not sure whether it looks right, i may just take it apart and fit it with different plated hardware. whats your opinions????
Rgrds
Rich
Rich - 1st of all there is no such thing as a non-abrasive car polish, its like say a non-abrasive sandpaper. I think the earlier responses have answered this quite well. After an hour polishing, you have stripped away the upgrade gold finish and exposed the gold titanium layer underneath, if you keep going you will get down to solid brass. To get down to the gold titanium it normally take months if not years to happen under normal daily use of the pen.
The splotches or scratches you tried to remove were either caused in the transportation from the factory in Taiwan to our warehouse in Australia or from the transportation from our warehouse in Australia to you in the UK - courier companies are known to miss handle parcel which could of caused a scratch. The other cause may be a chemical reaction with the gules you use or the chemical you use to polish. Either way I am alway happy to replace the parts or give you a full refund.
Let me know what you guys think and how I am able to improve the results. I approach my pen making with the pen maker in mind.
I can send feed back to the pen factories and improve results for all of us.
Regards
David