First try semi kitless - Walnut Atrax Fountain

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BHuij

BHuij

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Joined
Apr 23, 2025
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Location
Utah
I've made essentially a closed end Atrax here. Wanted to try and see if I could get the profile I wanted using these tubes, since the center band is pretty minimalist, and I have a fancier pen sketched out using more expensive wood.

This was my first attempt at deviating from regular kits. The body turned out great. The cap did not. I'll be re-doing that part.

I also took the liberty of buying a medium Bock #5 to replace the IPG nib this kit comes with. I'm a bit of a nib snob and I have yet to have a good experience with an IPG nib. The Bock writes nicely.

I'll take a nicer photo when I get a cap made that I'm happy with.

Thanks to all who have helped me dive in on this with all my questions lately!

IMG_5346.jpeg
 
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Drewby108 said:
I think you should post a poc of the cap you're unhappy with if you have one. Just for comparison's sake.

Good job on the piece you have done!
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It was actually done, but when I was press fitting the threaded portion into the brass tube, it splintered. I had turned it too thin. I ended up cleaning the tube off with my skew and drilling a new piece to try again.
 
Berea seems to have them.

Last night before posting this, I took some measurements and re-drilled a new piece of walnut to redo the cap. I wanted a more gradual taper on the cap to match the pen body (I wanted the overall profile of this pen to be fairly similar to my Pilot 823). But the 12.5mm tube was somewhere in the neighborhood of 50mm long, so I couldn't get the taper I wanted without hitting brass tube. That's actually what happened to the last one - I was too aggressive and peeked through the wood towards the end of the tube. It was so fragile that press fitting the threaded section crushed it.

This time I'm only using 30mm of the 12.5mm tube. I drilled out the remaining ~20mm needed to for the nib to sit in the cap properly using an 8mm bit and glued it up. This morning I dremel'd off the protruding ~20mm of the 12.5mm tube from the blank, and sanded everything flush before test fitting the nib. It seems to clear just fine! Hopefully I can turn/sand/finish the cap v2 tonight and post a final picture.

I will also be messing with a couple of different approaches to getting the clip attached; I really do want a clip. Failing that I'll at least put in some kind of roll stop.
 
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Almost forgot to mention - big thanks to @rherrell for the 10.5mm pin chuck used to turn this pen body. It shipped fast, arrived in great shape, and worked perfectly.
 
I like that profile. Looking forward to seeing it with the cap.
BHuij said:
Almost forgot to mention - big thanks to @rherrell for the 10.5mm pin chuck used to turn this pen body. It shipped fast, arrived in great shape, and worked perfectly.
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I was going to ask if you used a pin chuck. I just finished a couple closed end handles and thought I could really use a couple of those. I'll certainly check with Rick when I decide to get some.
 
Second cap is done and came out pretty well. Definitely better than the first, and not only because I didn't destroy it when seating the press-fit parts :D

I'm still trying to decide the best way to attempt to get a clip into the cap. Whether I succeed or fail, I promise more pictures.

This pen has been a great learning experience. I made a lot of mistakes and learned from them all. I want to revisit the proportions of body and cap length. I want to pay closer attention to wall thickness, as it's far more relevant than it ever was with kit pens. And eventually, I will get set up to use taps and dies in my tailstock so I can cut my own threads and stop relying on kit parts.
 
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