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With apologies ......

Sorry for my last post, but one of our cats decided that a nice warm laptop keyboard would be a nice place to curl up for a sleep, however much I tried to discourage him. Still he did manage some typing before sending my half completed message off .... :redface:

As I was trying to say before, my name is Tony Wells, from Leeds, England, and have been a member here for quite some time. Unfortunately I've not been able to do any wood turning for a couple of years now, due to difficulties standing at my lathe, but my wife bought me one of these shaving sets, complete with a so-called 'safety' razor, so I bought a razor kit off eBay, one that takes modern Gillette Mach 3 blades, before I bled to death and ended up buying a bench top mini lathe too - an expensive present, for me !!!

Having bought the mini lathe, I had to try pen turning again, and have bought a few kits, some Slimlines, and some assorted fountain pens, and thought that I would come back here. It's a good job I did, as I managed to assemble my first Slimline back to front as it were, with the nib where the cap should be. As the barrels are shaped, rather than straight, I need to remove it and put it in the correct barrel, but I cannot grip the (acrylic) barrel tight enough to hold it whilst hitting the removal rod with a hammer due to arthritis, so can anyone suggest an alternative way please, one that won't destroy the barrel?

Regards to all,

Tony.
 
TonyW said:
Sorry for my last post, but one of our cats decided that a nice warm laptop keyboard would be a nice place to curl up for a sleep, however much I tried to discourage him. Still he did manage some typing before sending my half completed message off .... :redface:

As I was trying to say before, my name is Tony Wells, from Leeds, England, and have been a member here for quite some time. Unfortunately I've not been able to do any wood turning for a couple of years now, due to difficulties standing at my lathe, but my wife bought me one of these shaving sets, complete with a so-called 'safety' razor, so I bought a razor kit off eBay, one that takes modern Gillette Mach 3 blades, before I bled to death and ended up buying a bench top mini lathe too - an expensive present, for me !!!

Having bought the mini lathe, I had to try pen turning again, and have bought a few kits, some Slimlines, and some assorted fountain pens, and thought that I would come back here. It's a good job I did, as I managed to assemble my first Slimline back to front as it were, with the nib where the cap should be. As the barrels are shaped, rather than straight, I need to remove it and put it in the correct barrel, but I cannot grip the (acrylic) barrel tight enough to hold it whilst hitting the removal rod with a hammer due to arthritis, so can anyone suggest an alternative way please, one that won't destroy the barrel?

Regards to all,

Tony.
Click to expand...

Tony welcome back into the fray. Hope things work out for you as you try to progress again. Health problems are a bummer but things can be overcome. Best of luck in this area.

As for your problem I have included a couple links on this problem. Many people just find some sort of rubber material to grip the barrel with or have made up a jig to knock out the parts. It is mentioned in the threads I provided. You can probably find other threads on this topic by doing a search for repairing slimlines. Good luck

http://www.penturners.org/forum/f14/taking-slimlines-apart-27070/


http://www.penturners.org/forum/f14/intro-broken-twist-mech-113509/
 
Welcome from Texas, Tony.
And welcome to your cats too - that was one of the more entertaining recent posts. :smile:
 
Welcome Tony and company lol kitty
I seen someone use a small piece of leather to cushion the blank but back ward's . But I have never tried it so please take it for what it's worth...
 
Thanks for all the welcomes, both to me and to my cat (who's nickname is Asbo btw, for obvious reasons - he helped me write to an Australian pen friend via Yahoo Messenger as well as my introduction here!).

Especial thanks to John T for the links and to the gentleman at Liggett Pen Works (did I miss seeing your name btw?). I'll try to the methods in the links first, and if that fails I'll write to the Pen Works.

Regards to all,

Tony.
 
I'm not really sure whether it's better to get the letter, number and fraction drill bit set or to just buy the metric bits as you need them. Price wise that is. I own the 115 bit set and it's still not enough. The 12.5mm bit doesn't convert to SAE. I get by because I use a boring bar to trim out to 12.5mm. And I broke down and ordered a 12.5 anyway. Most of the others you can get by with the SAE set and a rat tailed file to make it a little bigger.
You will eventually need all those other SAE bits though.
 
My thanks for all of these other tips, which have been duly noted, and my thanks to David for his kind offer too. I like those modified Mole Grips from PSI that Keith gave me the link for, btw, but international shipping has become a bit of a problem these days, whether it be PSI, eBay, or wherever. There are some UK importers of PSI products though, so I'll check them out, in case they import these too, although I've never seen them before I must admit.

Talking of PSI products, when I first started turning pens, they were always at the budget end of the market - 'cheap and cheerful' - whether it was pen kits, tools, or whatever. Looking at their current prices, along with them being imported into the UK now, would it be fair to say that PSI are going upmarket, into Craft Supplies territory? Shipping, import duties and UK sales taxes would make private imports quite expensive, but as there are a few other things I would like, they might be worth it if the quality is there now.
 
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