Pennstate rant

[TBone]

I think the difference in the wear of the 24k has as much to do with the person using the pen as the plating. In a former life, I worked in a jewelry store. I've seen people that had sterling turn their fingers green in 24 hours. I've seen people that wore it 24 x 7 x 365 and never had a problem. I've even seen people that couldn't wear 18k gold jewelry. Metals react to different people in different ways due to body chemistry. This could explain the wide range of experiences with the 24k plating. I have one on my desk that gets dropped in a cup with other pens and beat and banged pretty good. It's the second pen I ever made. Not the first sign of wear on it. And it came from PSI.

 

[psilevy]

Hi Brewmeister35
This is Ed Levy, owner of Penn State Industries.
I'm extremely concerned about the problems you're finding with our pens. As a company, we QC our products extremely critically to deliver the best product available for the $$$$. It serves us no useful purpose to deliver defective (or inferior) product - at the same time we can't check every kit that goes out the door - so we depend on customer feedback to correct problems we've missed.

Honestly, after selling many hundreds of the kits you're having problems with - yours is the first complaint (I'm personally aware of) about the plating on the Majestic Jr. and the mechanism on the Gatsby Click (we've actually gotten numerous compliments and positive reviews on these products).

I'm concerned that perhaps your kits are in a nest of defectives in one of our batches. Please send me back the defective parts for our review (TO MY ATTENTION) . I will replace the parts at no cost and we will troubleshoot the problem and send your parts back to our suppliers for their review and improvement for future batches.
Thanks for feedback and your help!!

Ed Levy
VP & GM Penn State Industries
9900 Global Road, Philadelphia PA 19115

 

[mikes pens]

Now that was a good response by Ed! That is what I like to see! Too bad his company didn't deal with me that way when I had a complaint a couple of years ago. I haven't been back since.

 

[Brewmeister35]

Thank you Ed for your response! I will return them to you ASAP.

 

[heineda]

I recently purchased 6 of their Apollo fountain pen kits, and I really like them. It is a great looking pen, and the supplied nib puts down a dark, wet line of ink. So far, I am really please with this kit. My question is if the Apollo is a clone of the Churchill pen kit? PSI's new Tycoon kit looks very much like a Baron. Same drill bits, tubes, etc.

Dan

 

[redfishsc]

Originally posted by heineda

My question is if the Apollo is a clone of the Churchill pen kit? PSI's new Tycoon kit looks very much like a Baron. Same drill bits, tubes, etc.

Dan

Clone: no (I don't recall if the drill bits/tubes/bushings are the same). I've made both, and can't decide. I'm quite happy with the nib coupler of the Apollo (metal) vs. the plastic "prone to breaking" one on the Churchill.

However I like the center band on the Churchill more. Just a personal thing though.

 

[Dave_M]

Originally posted by heineda

My question is if the Apollo is a clone of the Churchill pen kit? PSI's new Tycoon kit looks very much like a Baron. Same drill bits, tubes, etc.

Dan

In regards to the Baron & Tycoon comparison, the tubes are the same length & diameter but the bushings are sightly different. The end of the cap where the clip is pressed on is slightly smaller on the Baron.

 

[Daniel]

I have a lot of P.S.I. tools including the Tempest Cyclone DC. but have not had any of there kits in quite a while. Note I don't do ,any other turning projects so don't know much about those. I was starting to think that maybe P.S.I. was changing there ways when it came to kit quality with the newer kits but maybe not. It used to be that P.S.I. was the lower cost lower quality alternative but now it seems that maybe they want to just up the price on there economy products. I ran into this issue with CSUSA over pen blanks once. they where charging premium prices for stabilized buckeye burl and I got just plain old looking wood. it all went back after a phone call. I was told that they do not cull there pen blanks and I told them that the charge like they do. I have never gotten a second rate blank from them again. So suppliers do listen. maybe in some cases they just have not been told. maybe in others they just have no intention of changing.