My free ebonite blanks!!

[glycerine]

First of all, I never realized that ebonite came in so many different colors! Usually I see ebonite pens that are swirled with black and either blue, green, red or maybe yellow.
I contacted a few manufacturers recently to acquire about ebonite and asked for samples. I received one package in the mail yesterday that contained cutoffs from each color that they offer. To my surprise, they also included two 20mm by 8 inch rods of a black and tan swirl color!! I told the guy that I was a pen maker, so I think he included those as a little "extra" for me. How wonderfully nice!!!
If I do a kitless and couple one of these ebonite blanks with one of the "quad" or "triple" system samples that I got from Bock last year, I'll have myself a free pen! Can't beat that!

Here are some pics:

 

[DozerMite]

I have those exact samples directly from Germany. I also have those rods, vulcanized and unvulcanized.:wink:


Unvulcanized...

 

[glycerine]

What?!? He told me I was special... ;-)

 

[BRobbins629]

Nice score - what has always bothered me about that supplier is the diameter of the rods - usually 22 - 25 mm. For pens we can usually get by with 16mm for most anything. If you calculate the areas, a 16 mm would be about half the material of a 22-25mm. To me its the difference between an expensive material with a lot of waste and something that would be reasonable.

 

[glycerine]

Bruce, it may not be who you think it is then, or maybe they produce more sizes than they used to because they do have 16mm rods (and even smaller in black only)...