Lining up grain on capped pen

[flippedcracker]

How do you guys do it? I've just recently gotten into capped pens (like jr gents and jr statesmen), and on my second one I noticed I didn't like the grain up properly when it's closed. I'm thinking the way to do it is push the centerband coupler into the cap, and then screw in the nib coupler, and then push that into the main body atleast enough to stick (and then unscrew it and push it all the way in). Is that what you guys do?

 

[Sylvanite]

Basically, yes. If I'm assembling a fountain pen, though, I usually put the nib on first and then align the cap to match. That way, I can line up the nib with the grain on the pen body as well. If the pen is postable, I then do the finial end too.

I hope that helps,
Eric

 

[Haynie]

Yep

 

[paintspill]

i get to say yes now too.

yes

 

[Andrew_K99]

Ditto. It took disassembling a pen to rethink my ways and I do it as you've described.

AK

 

[azamiryou]

Here's my sequence:

1 - lower barrel coupler. For FP, I decide what part of the barrel should be up during writing, and make sure it's aligned.
2 - screw the cap coupler (threads/center band) onto the lower barrel, align grain and slide the cap barrel onto the coupler as far as it will go by hand, then unscrew it and press it into place.
3 - decide where the clip will go, and press the cap finial into place.
4 - For FP, thread the cap onto the lower barrel finial, then align it so the clip is up when the pen is held for writing. For other capped pens, this orientation is not important, so I just press in the finial.

 

[BSea]

You know that most of the kit pens use a quad thread. This means that the threading can start in 1 of 4 places, so you might have to play with it to get the proper threads to start.

 

[flippedcracker]

Thanks guys. This was only my second capped pen, and the first one came apart easily so I was able to do that one with no problem. Now I know there's more to consider when putting it all together. I hadn't thought about having the clip up when writing, or having the grain kind of line up when the cap is posted.

 

[dbledsoe]

So do you line up the grain with the pen capped or with the cap posted?

 

[Haynie]

You can do both. I just do capped though.

 

[louisbry]

How do you align the grain on both ends? My alignment is where the cut in the blank occurs (where the cap screws onto the pen).

 

[Ogg]

You can do both. I just do capped though.

I do mine capped as well....some of the dual barrel pens I do have a postable cap and others dont, but I figure the pen should be assembled so that it looks best with the cap screwed on, not posted.

 

[azamiryou]

Align for capped (closed for twist pens). When it's posted or twisted open, it's in use and the writer's hand blocks the view of most of the pen anyway.

 

[randyrls]

How do you align the grain on both ends? My alignment is where the cut in the blank occurs (where the cap screws onto the pen).

I don't think you can do this. The grain can match from end A to end B. If you now try to match end C to end B, it isn't going to match.

 

[keithbyrd]

With multistart threads putting the cap back on is tricky to try to maintain the alignment. Here is what I do - Insert the pen nib into the cap so the threads just touch - align the grain and then back off till I get the first click and screw on!