Manu Propria Pens - Nib Experiment - Sneak Preview

[manupropria]

In the moment I am working on a nib/feed experiment.
It's a No.8 gold nib and matching ink-feed milled from Bronze, all made in my atelier.
No idea if it will work out although there is no reason why not.
If it works the feed can also be made from 18 kt gold

Stay tuned

Best,

Martin

 

[Bob in SF]

Looks great! - eager to see how it works out!

 

[Curly]

That's fascinating.
How much weight does that bronze feed add to the pen?
A solid gold feed or would you just gold plate it?
What is the rosin, pitch, tar, putty goop holding the nib?
Are you using it to hold the nib for shaping/polishing or are you pressing the nib into it as part of the forming process.
Thanks for indulging my questions.

 

[More4dan]

Different metals have different "wetabilities". Some metals, like stainless steel, are hydrophobic. Water beads instead of forming a film. I'm guessing a film on the surface is important for a feed. Maybe check the materials and surface finishes you are thinking of using with various inks to see how they interact.

Or I could be overthinking this and it won't matter. But, easy to test before all the milling.

VERY cool idea and execution. I'd love to hear about and see the results.

Danny


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app

 

[manupropria]

Honestly spoken I have no clue if things will work out.
The weight of the feed is 9 gr.
The reason for a metal feed is that I have seen many Ebonite feeds with broken comb.
Since it is a copper alloy I havee to make a barriere with Palladium coating and Gold or Rhodium coating.

The pitch I use is Matsuyani a pitch used by Japanese metal workers. Pine Rosin mixed with a fine Clay Powder. I fixed the nib in the Pitch tu grind/smoothen the inside of thee nib

 

[bmachin]

Don't know if you saw this thread or not. It's one that I started back in November with links to a series of articles by a feed designer. If you run into problems there's a lot of good technical help.

http://www.penturners.org/forum/f50/how-fountain-pens-work-not-so-basic-guide-157142/

Bill

 

[Charlie_W]

Great to see some of the mechanics behind your creations! I hope this works well.

 

[manupropria]

This morning I worked a little bit on the Feed.
The feed was Rhodium plated and then 10 microns gold plated. The Rhodium seals the Bronze before Gold plating. If Copper alloys like Bronze and Brass are not pre-plated with Palladium, the Gold would fuse with and will be absorbed by the Bronze within short time. Ink flow is great, the feed took the ink within a fraction of a second