New Kitless FP in semi transparent acrylic with 5mm JOWO bib.

[More4dan]

My first all acrylic FP. I used a blank that is transparent from one side and opaque from the other. It's not quite as dramatic after turning and drilling but still different. Dimensions are 12mm diameter and 125 mm capped and 123 mm uncapped. It uses a K5 converter and a JOWO 5mm nib with a Ruthenium finish. The ends were rounded with a 3/4" roundover router bit mounted in boring bar holder. Comments and questions welcomed. Any links to how to polish the ID would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[thewishman]

Looks like a very nice pen!

For polishing the inside, cut a thin slot in a dowel and put a short strip of sandpaper through the slot - slide the dowel into a barrel and start sanding. It takes a bit of extra effort.

 

[Bill78]

That's a great looking blank - very unusual effect, and I like what you have done with it! Looks very good.

I have played around with trying to smooth out bores on metals - and I think that the principles move from one material to another. It's the same process as the one you have applied to get that smooth, shiny exterior. First you cut as smoothly as you can - well-sharpened drill, then a reamer if you have one (you can get expanding reamers that cover a range of diameters). After that I start with sanding as thewishman suggests - just like the exterior I use finer and finer grades through to wet and dry 1200 / 1500 paper around / through a bar of some sort. To get smoother than that I have used lapping pastes- you can get very, very fine pastes equivalent to 20,000 grit. The tool to use needs to be softer than the material you are lapping - to lap steel I use brass. The paste enbeds in the brass and wears away the steel. For plastics I think I would try wood - and finish up with metal polish using a cloth on a small bar.

Hopefully someone with more experience / knowledge will respond and we'll both learn something!

Good luck and please let us know how you get on.

 

[bmachin]

Go to edisonpen.com. Click on: Resources--Helpful Videos. The video on the Beaumont Demonstrator is dedicated almost entirely to polishing the inside of the pen. The video on the Menlo Pump Filler shows Edison's whole process of making a pen, including a fairly complete section on the inside work.

There are probably other videos out there, but these are very, very good.

Hope it helps
Bill

 

[Bill78]

Go to edisonpen.com. Click on: Resources--Helpful Videos. The video on the Beaumont Demonstrator is dedicated almost entirely to polishing the inside of the pen. The video on the Menlo Pump Filler shows Edison's whole process of making a pen, including a fairly complete section on the inside work.

There are probably other videos out there, but these are very, very good.

Hope it helps
Bill

Superb resource bmachin / Bill. Many thanks for posting that - I love the videos! Don't know about More4dan but they will help me a hell of a lot.

Bill78

 

[bmachin]

Glad they helped.

Bill

 

[More4dan]

Thanks for all the comments. The video helped a lot. Wooden dowel and fine grit sand paper ready to go. I also purchased some gun cleaning swabs in different diameters to use with buffer polishing rouge.