Need Better Pen Kits

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C

Cincinnati

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Joined
Oct 19, 2010
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17
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Gulf Coast
My boys (ages 8, 10, & 12) Have been making pens for a couple of years. Until our local Woodcraft store closed its doors, we bought 90% of our kits form them, especially the $3 slimline kits and the Wall Street. I notice many of these pens don't fare well by the people we gave them to, and those we sold. The main complaint was finish wearing off and mechanisms getting stiff.

It seems Rhodium is the hardest, longest wearing plating. Since many prefer gold, is there a comparable gold plating?

As I've been searching for better pen kits, I discovered it a daunting if not overwhelming task to sort through the different suppliers. By appearance the pens look alike with different names.

I want to build two types of pens: a good quality slimline and a Mont Blank / Waterman quality larger pen (Mostly rollerball and ball point with an occasional fountain pen).
 
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RhodiumTI Gold, Black TI are some of the best and we have sveral vendors here who carry them for a great price.
Exoticblanks
Beartoothwoods
LauLau Woods
are among several good dealers
 
TIGold

Cincinnati said:
My boys (ages 8, 10, & 12) Have been making pens for a couple of years. Until our local Woodcraft store closed its doors, we bought 90% of our kits form them, especially the $3 slimline kits and the Wall Street. I notice many of these pens don't fare well by the people we gave them to, and those we sold. The main complaint was finish wearing off and mechanisms getting stiff.

It seems Rhodium is the hardest, longest wearing plating. Since many prefer gold, is there a comparable gold plating?

As I've been searching for better pen kits, I discovered it a daunting if not overwhelming task to sort through the different suppliers. By appearance the pens look alike with different names.

I want to build two types of pens: a good quality slimline and a Mont Blank / Waterman quality larger pen (Mostly rollerball and ball point with an occasional fountain pen).
Click to expand...

Titanium Gold, Black Titanium Nitrate(that is Nitride not Nitrate) and Platinum/Rhodium all wear well as does Chrome actually Platinum and Rhodium won't wear any better than chrome. Any Slimlines (including the low cost variety) using those finishes will wear well. Same story for the bigger pens...longest wear will be for those 4 finishes and you can pay as much as you want for the kits they will range from $4/$5 for "Designer" and "Euro" which are sort of Mont Blanc look alikes (ballpoint only) to $40/$50 for some of the high end kits.
 
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Woodcraft is an expensive pen source. It's probably a blessing you can't walk in their and buy kits.

Having had the plating issue answered with the titanium, rhodium or chrome finishes, I like these sources for kits...I shop them all and compare prices because any one or all of them can be having a sale on something.

www.Exoticblanks.com
www.arizonasilhouette.com
www.woodturnerscatalog.com
and wood n whimsies ...don't remember their web address.

beware, woodturners catalog <CSUSA> the JR kits are experiencing threading issues at this time. Hopefully they will be solving that soon.
 
For me, I use chrome Ti gold, black Ti, rhodium, and if I really like the kit and I need it I will use 10 ct gold. If you are not sure what color to use, use black TI it seems to go with any blank.
 
Thanks everyone. Where are these kits sourcing from? It seems there are really one or two sources that everyone uses; and it seems that some retailers rename the kits. Is this true? Are there any USA made pen kits?
 
Info

Cincinnati said:
Thanks everyone. Where are these kits sourcing from? It seems there are really one or two sources that everyone uses; and it seems that some retailers rename the kits. Is this true? Are there any USA made pen kits?
Click to expand...

I don't think there are any USA made pen kits....I have not found any if there are.

Rhodium is NOT harder than Chrome...the Moh hardness of Rhodium is 6.0 and Chrome is 8.5...the higher number is harder.

Rhodium is not replacing Chrome to increase the wear, I think it is because it wears almost as well but is a brighter color....replacing both Chrome and Silver with a single color. I like the color of Rhodium alittle better than Chrome.

Where pen kits say Platinum you have to ask the supplier...it is usually Rhodium which is in the platinum group of metals. I have asked a couple of suppliers and they have told me their platinum is rhodium. Platinum is 25% softer than Rhodium and looks about the same.

Titanium Gold which is mostly Titanium Nitride (with a small amount of gold) is much much harder than gold and is probably also harder than Chrome although I can't find a direct comparison.

Any Gold of less than 24 karat will be somewhat (but perhaps marginally) more resistant to wear than 24k gold, how much will depend on the alloy actually used.

My source for most of the above information is Wikipedia, looking up each metal (except Titanium Nitride) by its periodic table name.
 
I do not know how many sources of pen kits there is..I can only guess maybe 4. The other question..renaming pen kits, yes, that happens a lot, Woodcraft re-names most of it's kits, but they are not the only one to do so. You have to be careful too, because sometimes a kit is the same kit but with a different name, and sometimes it's really similar but not the same, or maybe it even has the same name but is not the same!! The CSUSA Elegant Beauty is not at all the same as the Lau Lau woodworks Elegant Beauty.
 
I actaully talked to CSUSA about the Jr. Gent Threading issue the other day, and they told me that they are well aware of the problem and it seems to be only affecting a batch of them, which batch is that, I have no idea. But they know about the problem and are trying to fix it
 
Jr Gent Threading issue

wizical said:
I actaully talked to CSUSA about the Jr. Gent Threading issue the other day, and they told me that they are well aware of the problem and it seems to be only affecting a batch of them, which batch is that, I have no idea. But they know about the problem and are trying to fix it
Click to expand...

On the Jr Gent 1 the threading issue is resolved at the source and all vendors don't have it....My kits have no threading issue.
 
Sources of kits

workinforwood said:
I do not know how many sources of pen kits there is..I can only guess maybe 4. The other question..renaming pen kits, yes, that happens a lot, Woodcraft re-names most of it's kits, but they are not the only one to do so. You have to be careful too, because sometimes a kit is the same kit but with a different name, and sometimes it's really similar but not the same, or maybe it even has the same name but is not the same!! The CSUSA Elegant Beauty is not at all the same as the Lau Lau woodworks Elegant Beauty.
Click to expand...

I think there are probably more than 4 but it's really tough to find out. Berea says they source their own, there is Dayacom, there is Rizheng, and one of the Australian guys (I forget his name) says that he has multiple sources on both Taiwan and Mainland China. I think PSI and CSUSA both have multiple vendors on Mainland China but don't know that for sure. Searching the usual overseas source sites does not turn up much.

There are a couple of reasons that you can't go by names - one is Trademark. PSI seems to have about half of their kit names registered as trademarks (and won't let you use them unless they supply the kits) and I assume some of the other sellers have a lot of theirs registered also.
 
More than one

I think most of us have more than one source. I personally buy from 3 different sources excluding myself. It depends on what style I want and whether I'm buying something else as well as kits. I also sell slimlines to some folks here who buy everything else from other sellers.
 
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