On my first 2 pens, I just made a tenon on the end of the cap and slid a silver band onto it. It looks "ok", but I really wanted to try having multiple bands and not having the band go all the way to the end of the cap. So I tried my hand at swaging the rings on and then I tried the more popular way of making a tenon and sliding the metal band on along with bands made from the same material as the cap. Now I'm up to 4 pens... so can I start calling myself a pen maker now?
I couldn't really find any information online about how to swage metal bands, so I decided to just give it a try. I first tried with a small silver ring that had been messed up while I was making it and swaged it onto a scrap piece of ebonite. I turned the ebonite down so the silver ring just barely fit over it, then I turned a groove into it the same width as the silver band. My silver bands are only 0.35mm thick, so getting the depth just right isn't realistic. Plus, the result will be a thicker band, but I don't know how much thicker (yeah, I could have done math to get an estimate). So I just eyeballed it. Then I slid it into my collet chuck and tightened it down as hard as I could. To my surprise, it worked perfectly on the first try.
So then I tried it on an actual cap. Same process, but I did 2 silver bands. I didn't plan the diameter around the collet sizes that I had, but that probably would have been a good idea. The diameter I ended up with resulted in me having to do 2 rounds with different size collets. One of the silver bands worked absolutely perfectly. On the other the groove was just slightly too deep and after swaging it, you could twist the silver band around. A couple drops of thin CA glue wicked up underneath it and tightened it right up. Of course, make sure you haven't drilled out the cap before doing this, if you try this on a drilled out cap, you are likely to crack it.
Turns out, this is actually a pretty easy thing to do. Here is my swaging attempt on a pen I made using Conway Colors Cerulean Blue, black ebonite, and silver. I haven't made the clip for it because I am out of silver and waiting on more to be delivered.
Next I tried the method I think most people here use, turning down a tenon and sliding rings over it. Pen is made from Conway Colors Vintage Port and brass. This one I purchased a solid brass clip, snipped off the ring it came with and soldered it onto my own brass ring.
Ultimately, I think swaging is a bit easier because you don't have to turn down a wide tenon with really tight tolerances. If you mess up the swaging, there are no retries. The tenon approach doesn't have the risk of ruining your silver rings, but it uses a lot more material. So swaging would be great if you are going to be tight on blank material or if there is a pattern in the material you want to preserve. If you have plenty of blank material and don't have any pattern to worry about, the tenon approach works well. However if you are planning on making your cap walls really thin, the tenon approach has issues. I think most people here use CA glue or epoxy to adhere the rings onto the tenon. If your internal threading cuts through into the glue or epoxy, those threads are going to be weak. My cap threads are M12x0.75, the cap is only 13.8mm in diameter, so I didn't trust CA or epoxy. Instead I made sure the tenon and acrylic rings were a very tight fit and then I used weld-on #3 to solvent weld them together. This way, the seam is just as strong as solid acrylic because the tenon and rings essentially become one piece of acrylic.
I couldn't really find any information online about how to swage metal bands, so I decided to just give it a try. I first tried with a small silver ring that had been messed up while I was making it and swaged it onto a scrap piece of ebonite. I turned the ebonite down so the silver ring just barely fit over it, then I turned a groove into it the same width as the silver band. My silver bands are only 0.35mm thick, so getting the depth just right isn't realistic. Plus, the result will be a thicker band, but I don't know how much thicker (yeah, I could have done math to get an estimate). So I just eyeballed it. Then I slid it into my collet chuck and tightened it down as hard as I could. To my surprise, it worked perfectly on the first try.
So then I tried it on an actual cap. Same process, but I did 2 silver bands. I didn't plan the diameter around the collet sizes that I had, but that probably would have been a good idea. The diameter I ended up with resulted in me having to do 2 rounds with different size collets. One of the silver bands worked absolutely perfectly. On the other the groove was just slightly too deep and after swaging it, you could twist the silver band around. A couple drops of thin CA glue wicked up underneath it and tightened it right up. Of course, make sure you haven't drilled out the cap before doing this, if you try this on a drilled out cap, you are likely to crack it.
Turns out, this is actually a pretty easy thing to do. Here is my swaging attempt on a pen I made using Conway Colors Cerulean Blue, black ebonite, and silver. I haven't made the clip for it because I am out of silver and waiting on more to be delivered.
Next I tried the method I think most people here use, turning down a tenon and sliding rings over it. Pen is made from Conway Colors Vintage Port and brass. This one I purchased a solid brass clip, snipped off the ring it came with and soldered it onto my own brass ring.
Ultimately, I think swaging is a bit easier because you don't have to turn down a wide tenon with really tight tolerances. If you mess up the swaging, there are no retries. The tenon approach doesn't have the risk of ruining your silver rings, but it uses a lot more material. So swaging would be great if you are going to be tight on blank material or if there is a pattern in the material you want to preserve. If you have plenty of blank material and don't have any pattern to worry about, the tenon approach works well. However if you are planning on making your cap walls really thin, the tenon approach has issues. I think most people here use CA glue or epoxy to adhere the rings onto the tenon. If your internal threading cuts through into the glue or epoxy, those threads are going to be weak. My cap threads are M12x0.75, the cap is only 13.8mm in diameter, so I didn't trust CA or epoxy. Instead I made sure the tenon and acrylic rings were a very tight fit and then I used weld-on #3 to solvent weld them together. This way, the seam is just as strong as solid acrylic because the tenon and rings essentially become one piece of acrylic.