Boy Am I Stupid

[montmill]

Working on a Junior Gentleman II fountain pen and was confused with the bottom tube as the bushings were different sizes. OH, THEY ARE!

I guess for me to learn all the ins and outs of the different pen kits is to screw up to learn. Always seemed to learn at the "school of hard knocks".

As my grands would say, "Duh Grandpa".

 

[Joebobber]

Wait until you glue the body tube into the cap, and can't figure out why the cap tube won't fit in the body.

 

[RichAldrich]

Happens. Bummer. I lay out the kit on a notebook. Caliper and record each component and bushing and place in order. Then get a major catch or something else.

 

[Woodchipper]

The School of Hard Knocks has a lot of graduates. The school colors are black and blue.

 

[WriteON]

Screwing up is on page one in the Rules of Life. It's ok to screw up. The object is make the first mistake the last mistake

 

[WriteON]

Wait until you glue the body tube into the cap, and can't figure out why the cap tube won't fit in the body.

Wait until you're admiring a newly finished pen and drop it.

 

[tomtedesco]

Proves your human.

 

[Gregf]

Been there, done that also.

 

[WriteON]

Wait'll you go to place a sharp skew under your arm for a second to hold it and stick into your forearm instead. Just wait. Made that mistake twice that moment... first and last time.

 

[egnald]

I have hand written notes all over my set of printed instruction sheets. Some are pretty basic, but I have learned my lesson too many times. For the Junior Gent I screwed up so many times (doing exactly the same thing you did) that I re-created a set of instructions so that I could emphasize a few things - like "The flange of the Trim Rings needs to face the blank" and "The smallest Trim Ring goes on the Nib end - Don't Guess - Measure!". Even with all of that I still manage to let my own "Duh" show up once in a while! - Dave

EDIT: As Ed pointed out in his post below, for the Jr. series the smallest trim ring goes on the Finial side of the Lower Blank, not on the Nib! It just goes to show how important making (and reading notes) is sometimes! - Dave

 

[ed4copies]

Just so no one is mislead: In the junior series, including the junior gent mentioned above, the smallest ring goes on the FINIAL side, not the nib.

Not trying to be a pain, just want to avoid someone ruining a kit!!

Ed

 

[David350]

When I started making pens, I bought the PSI pen assembly / disassembly press, but I wondered why anyone would ever want to disassemble a pen. Obviously, it did not take too long to figure out why as I had made a few very odd looking cigar pens lol...

 

[egnald]

See - as Ed pointed out, I let my Duh come out even in the post I just did. I should have referred to my notes about which ends the trim rings go on before posting!! Dave

 

[jrista]

Wait until you glue the body tube into the cap, and can't figure out why the cap tube won't fit in the body.

BTDT...

 

[penicillin]

Good judgement comes from experience.

...

Experience comes from bad judgement.

 

[grebmar]

Wait until you glue the body tube into the cap, and can't figure out why the cap tube won't fit in the body.

Or forget to change the drill bit and drill the cap size hole for both cap and barrel.

 

[alphageek]

Thats nothing… At least the cap and body have different tube diameters. Cigars are the biggest nightmare. Different tube lengths, same diameter.. 4 different bushings. My bushings are actually stored in with a sample of the pen (that didn't turn out how i liked) so that I don't have to measure them every time or screw up the long and short tubes (been there, done that!)