jalbert
Member
This is a commissioned piece I finished up. It's very similar to a pen I previously made, but with some improvements. I made the pen completely from argentium silver, with an acrylic barrel/ink reservoir and cap liner.
I cast the argentium parts from wax tube and sheet, and formed the rough castings around aluminum mandrels I made, which went on the lathe for truing up and finishing. As always, when working with significant amounts of silver, weight and waste are the two factors I try and minimize. Wrapping wax sheet around my tapered mandrels allowed me to minimize both of these factors, as it gave me a casting that was an even thickness throughout, and tapered as needed for the final shape of the respective part.
The pen is approx 45-50 grams, which is reasonably lightweight for a metal pen. It fills via piston unit, which I fabricated as well. It is about 5" long when capped, 1/2" diameter at the cap threads, and uses triple lead 12tpi threads. The main improvement I incorporated in this pen from the prior was a multi-piece cap, consisting of the cap sleeve, acrylic liner, clip, and screw on finial. On the prior pen I simply had a cap sleeve With the clip soldered on, and an acrylic liner that was shellacked in place. This is a much better construction, as it does not use any adhesives as the means of connection. In fact, none of the parts on this pen rely on the use of adhesives, and contain threads or other mechanical connection for strength. I also incorporated a silver section/cap threads. To finish the pen out, I threaded it for a Pelikan M800 nib unit, which are expensive, but superb.
this took a considerable amount of work, 20-30 hours, and I am quite happy with the results. Important to me was nailing the engineering aspects, such as cap construction, which has been an ongoing experiment.
I cast the argentium parts from wax tube and sheet, and formed the rough castings around aluminum mandrels I made, which went on the lathe for truing up and finishing. As always, when working with significant amounts of silver, weight and waste are the two factors I try and minimize. Wrapping wax sheet around my tapered mandrels allowed me to minimize both of these factors, as it gave me a casting that was an even thickness throughout, and tapered as needed for the final shape of the respective part.
The pen is approx 45-50 grams, which is reasonably lightweight for a metal pen. It fills via piston unit, which I fabricated as well. It is about 5" long when capped, 1/2" diameter at the cap threads, and uses triple lead 12tpi threads. The main improvement I incorporated in this pen from the prior was a multi-piece cap, consisting of the cap sleeve, acrylic liner, clip, and screw on finial. On the prior pen I simply had a cap sleeve With the clip soldered on, and an acrylic liner that was shellacked in place. This is a much better construction, as it does not use any adhesives as the means of connection. In fact, none of the parts on this pen rely on the use of adhesives, and contain threads or other mechanical connection for strength. I also incorporated a silver section/cap threads. To finish the pen out, I threaded it for a Pelikan M800 nib unit, which are expensive, but superb.
this took a considerable amount of work, 20-30 hours, and I am quite happy with the results. Important to me was nailing the engineering aspects, such as cap construction, which has been an ongoing experiment.
