Ebonite Pen Blanks

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heinedan

heinedan

Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2006
Messages
171
Location
Oak Lawn, IL, USA.
Good Afternoon,

Recently, I have seen some really nice kitless pens made from ebonite. I'm trying to find a source to purchase ebonite pen blanks, or plain rods.

Thank You,
Daniel Heine
 
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Ed, thank you but....:confused::confused::confused:
Did I miss something in inventory????

Sorry guys I do NOT have ebonite (that I know of)....Bakelite, yes. Ebonite, no.

They do sound alot like though!!! :rolleyes::biggrin:
 
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I found some potential sources... Need to find out if the ebonite is the real deal. I might check further into this.

I bought a few rods a while back, then sold some of the blank "I didn't need". Now I am wishing I had hung onto them, this stuff is pretty hard to find.
Pipemakers 1" x 20" rod is about $50 each, Does anyone have any use for ~1/2" rod (for much less $$$)?

Dawn! I have used your cooking stuff you sent me! I have found that I actually enjoy cooking. Thanks again! (sorry, not trying to hijack ;))
 
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Marc, I am working on seeing what it would take to get an order together from overseas (larger diameter, high quality stuff). It might not be worth it, but I am checking at least.

BTW - if you know where Woodside of Warren is, I have worked for my grandfather's business doing a ton of work there over "vacation". If I remember correctly, it is on Hoover b/tw 11 and 12 mile, maybe? A few miles from Wholesale Tool.
 
Marc, I used to go to the tech center from time to time on business, when I was living in MI. Then there were not too many pen turners in the greater Detroit area. My Woodcraft was in Canton and I ever met one other pen man there - now I see a lot of Michiganders here on IAP.
 
If you're ever back in MI let me know!

Rudy Vey said:
Marc, I used to go to the tech center from time to time on business, when I was living in MI. Then there were not too many pen turners in the greater Detroit area. My Woodcraft was in Canton and I ever met one other pen man there - now I see a lot of Michiganders here on IAP.
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Found a source, but we are looking at 60m minimum order at 48 Euro per Meter for 20mm diameter stuff. But it would be black and color swirl, similar to M3 material in appearance.
 
I forget what a Euro trades at but that looks like a stiff price. I'm interested in a couple of meters, I hope you find others (you might want to check with pipemakers.org - last I heard they needed to restock as well.

Marc
 
marcruby said:
I forget what a Euro trades at but that looks like a stiff price. I'm interested in a couple of meters, I hope you find others (you might want to check with pipemakers.org - last I heard they needed to restock as well.

Marc
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Actually this is a group buy price from pipemakersforum.com

They just did a group buy for the black and may be doing one for the swirl material. The price I quoted is straight from their buy, but I do have the manufacturers info now too.

Here's the pic that they have of the stuff
 

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Tuba707 said:
BTW, what is the difference between ebonite and vulcanite?
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Ebonite and vulcanite are used pretty much interchangeably to mean "hard black rubber". However, in pipe making circles, there's a huge difference between the two.

Ebonite is a higher quality material that's lower in sulfur. It is harder than vulcanite, and easier to machine. It also has, when manufactured correctly, a much lower incidence of inclusions or bubbles in the material. It's furnished in rods of one meter (only manufacturers I know of are in Europe) and it comes in sizes from a couple mm all the way up to 50mm.

Vulcanite is a much softer rubber, having a much higher sulfur content. It is typically used only to make pre-molded stems or gee-gaws since the softer rubber can flow into the small areas of the molding press more readily. Bubbles are common, and a wide variance in batch quality also.

The most imnportant thing is that, because ebonite has less sulfur and other additives, it takes a much longer time to oxidize. Both will eventually oxidize, losing their shine and going a strange color anywhere from olive green to ugly gray, but the high quality ebonite will stay black considerably longer.

As far as the swirled stuff mentioned above, I'm the one coordinating the group buy on pipemakersforum.com. It's not really off the ground yet (we pipe smokers are a patient and methodical bunch) but it's on the horizon. We just completed an ebonite buy where we reached well over the minimum order amount, and any day now I'll be drowning in rod that needs to be shipped out.

These types of buys are fairly regular on the pipe makers forum, and if there's any interest I can post a heads-up here when we have a go at the next one.

And, of course, since I'm a pipe maker, I have loads of this stuff on hand. If you're in desperate need of a piece for a pen, send me an email. I posted some pen blanks of ebonite on eBay a while back, but only had one taker in the 5 weeks or so I had them listed. That pretty much sealed it for me, since that ate into all the profit I might have made, so I never relisted them.
 
Thanks Kurt,
I felt very fortunate to have found the buy that you guys were running while I was scouring the net today. I was going to log into pipemakers, but was going to wait until the buy fleshed itself out more.

Looking through the info you had over there, do you think you guys will be making a go of the solid color material also?
 
From pipecrafters post:

"Both will eventually oxidize, losing their shine and going a strange color anywhere from olive green to ugly gray, but the high quality ebonite will stay black considerably longer"

I'm sure the period is probably measured in years (and I hope it's a LOT of years...), but I'd be curious to know if anyone has any experience with or a rough idea about how long it will take for this oxidation to occur, and if there are any methods to delay it even further (or eliminate it all together, perhaps with some sort of sealing agent...). Given the high(er) cost of the raw material and, logically, the pen(s) that are produced from it, I don't think I'd want to be selling any pens that might suddenly lose their shine and turn a strange color...
 
Welcome Kutr,
would you explain the difference betwen raw and smoothed rods, I'ts a few euro less, but i dont see the benefit of smoothed if we are turning the rods down for pens, and how often do you guys do group buys of ebonite? Did it really take from sept 19 till present to get the material from SEM?
 
Price stated above at 48 euro per meter is comparable to some other cast blanks.

1 Euro = $1.2504 this morning.

48 euro / meter is $60.02.

At 39.37 in per meter it is $1.52 per inch, or $7.62 per 5 inch blank.

However, the $3600 to buy 60 meters is not small change!

Bill
Baltimore
 
will said:
Price stated above at 48 euro per meter is comparable to some other cast blanks.

1 Euro = $1.2504 this morning.

48 euro / meter is $60.02.

At 39.37 in per meter it is $1.52 per inch, or $7.62 per 5 inch blank.

However, the $3600 to buy 60 meters is not small change!

Bill
Baltimore
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True, but the WPP group buy I'm running right now is at $1841 in product with at least one more person that will be ordering. Right now, I only have 15 people on the list. The WPP celluloid buys that have happened in the past were in the thousands also. I don't think the buying power is a big problem, especially if we can dovetail with the pipemakers. They love the stuff even more than we do I think. :hypnotized:
 
@RussianWolf (Mike)
There wasn't much interest in the solid colors. I had a passing interest in them for, ironically, pen making - but only one other pipe maker expressed any real interest. You don't really see pipes made with colorful stems like that since most pipers are traditionalists. There's nothing saying they couldn't be used , it's just that you wouldn't sell very much.

@rstought (Bob)
Actually, ebonite can last an incredibly long time without oxidizing. Properly cared for, it may never oxidize. Same with vulcanite - properly cared for, it might never oxidize. The problem is, "properly cared for" means regular cleanings, reapplication of carnuba wax, etc. Given that, some vulcanite stems can go gray within a matter of months if never cleaned. Ebonite resists this for years. That's part of why hand-cut stems are so sought after, and people pay a premium for them. Factory pipes typically use vulcanite stems, while artisans usually cut their own from ebonite rod for their higher grade pipes.

Now, consider this though, pipe stems are subjected to a rather hostile environment on a weekly or daily basis. Pens would (hopefully) never be stuck in someone's mouth for extended periods and treated to tobacco smoke. As long as the pen is kept out of sunlight, I don't think there would be anything to worry about as far as the pen going all ugly. I have a pen I madea while back from brindled ebonite (aka Cumberland) that is still shiny and deep black with red graining some two years after I first made it - and I use it every day.

@PTJeff
As the vulcanite is extruded, it has a rough surface similar to what you might get when extruding Play-Doh. The manufacturer can precision grind this off to attain a smoothed surface ideal for using in collet chucks. The rough surface isn't suitable for holding in a collet chuck, but there's no other real reason for it. The rough surface can be held in a set of regular pin or spigot jaws for drilling with no problem. To reduce the incidence of off-axis drilling, I usually cut the ebonite to length, and use spigot jaws to grip as much of the rough surface as possible. BUT, with my recent acquisition of a Beal collet chuck, I've started ordering smoothed rods so that I don't have to deal with that. It's not actually a problem, it just helps me work a bit more efficiently when coupled with my metal lathe.

The group buy ran into some communication issues which delayed things. Those seem to have been resolved, and once we were talking in real time, things moved right along.

As Bill said, the real challenge is in meeting the minimum order. If they don't have the rod you need in stock, you might have to wait until the next time they get enough orders in to make it worthwhile to reconfigure the extruder. Since the extruder needs to be completely cleaned out, the dies changed, and floor reconfigured, it's a pretty labor intensive process to go from one product to another.
 
for those that haven't seen a pic of the solid color material, here's the one Kurt posted over at pipemakers.

And from their website, it looks like they have about 30 colors.
 

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Kurt...

Many thanks for your very informative reply. After reading it, I feel a lot better about moving forward with ebonite, should the opportunity arise for me to acquire some.
 
Hello Everyone,

Just joined the Association, thanks for having me!

I've been following the posts on ebonite pen blanks, and this appears to be an extremely hard material to find. Penn State Industries has several ebonite pen blanks in various colors, and I have made several pens out of their material. It seems to be good stuff.

Reading the other posts, it appears that the colors they have at Penn State may be too good to be true. Are the blanks at Penn State Industries real ebonite? And if so, why have they not been mentioned in the previous posts?

Here's the link:
http://woodturning.pennstateind.com/search/index?query=ebonite
 
MFortner said:
Hello Everyone,

Just joined the Association, thanks for having me!

I've been following the posts on ebonite pen blanks, and this appears to be an extremely hard material to find. Penn State Industries has several ebonite pen blanks in various colors, and I have made several pens out of their material. It seems to be good stuff.

Reading the other posts, it appears that the colors they have at Penn State may be too good to be true. Are the blanks at Penn State Industries real ebonite? And if so, why have they not been mentioned in the previous posts?

Here's the link:
http://woodturning.pennstateind.com/search/index?query=ebonite
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That was a 2 year old post you were reading. They probably just started carrying that stuff. Looks the same.

By the way welcome to the IAP family. I see this is your first post. Where have you been all these years:confused::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:
 
Ebonite has, traditionally been from Germany and we now have that at Exotics.

There is also a manufacturer in India, who has lower priced product.

I don't know who is buying what.

The process of making ebonite allows a high degree of "rejects"--or so we were told by the German producer--I have no personal experience with the Indian product, yet.

Hope this helps.
 
PR_Princess said:
Ed, thank you but....:confused::confused::confused:
Did I miss something in inventory????

Sorry guys I do NOT have ebonite (that I know of)....Bakelite, yes. Ebonite, no.

They do sound alot like though!!! :rolleyes::biggrin:
Click to expand...

Dawn, Ed needed more Lead in his coffee today, or he must have been turning ebonite in his dream last night. I think we can give him credit for drinking less leaded coffee.:eek::biggrin:
 
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I have worked with the ebonite Penn State sells. It is the India-sourced product and it is wretched. The good ebonite comes from Germany and is quite a bit more expensive.
 
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