Thread: 60th wedding anniversary pen

Very nice indeed,shows a bit of class and not overdone on the Beale ,hope your efforts pay off with messages hehe, cheers ~ John

very nice indeed

Originally Posted by gawdelpus

not overdone on the Beale

Beale - as in the Pen Wizard ??

Nope - all by hand.

Marked out the pattern on paper, wrapped it around the blank, pinpricks at intersections, then sawed away.

But, sheesh, I'll take it as a compliment

Or, given that my surname is "Rose", you could say I used a Rose engine

Cheers,
Andrew

done by hand and not the beall !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
well im amazed

Yep even more impressive hehe ! that's real dedication to say the least cheers ~ John

Very very nice pen. I am sure they will love it. As for the mistakes in the messages - what do you expect from politicians. Do they ever listen to the public?

By hand. Bl###y hell that is great. Well done Your parents will love it for it's craftsmanship and the heartfelt meaning. Well done.

Andrew, that pen expresses your love and dedication towards your parents., what a pity that people in a position of responsibility are not showing any, obviously they are just glancing at the request and quickly putting down what they think they saw!!!, how difficult is it to just read the request, think about it, then send the appropiate letter?, It will mean so much to your parents, anyway at least they have a wonderful pen to write down their thoughts, Amos

Hello Andrew

Now you know the very first question will be how did you do the design. I sure wished you would have given abit more detail in the opening thread. But since you did not we are going to bombard you with questions

First let me say very impressive and to now read you did this by hand makes it that much more impressive. Most people though will assume you did it on a machine which is a huge compliment to your skills.

What is the material the pen is made from???

What kit is that???

I see you left the area you carved out proud of the kit parts and shoulder of the mating areas. Why did you do this?? Was it so that you could use the saw better???

What tools di you use to make this design and maybe give us a brief rundown of your process without giving away trade secrets.

How did you finish the pen???

Thanks for the reply and thanks for showing. Great craftsmanship. I am sure it will be well received.

JJ, the kit is a Cambridge from Addictive Pen Kits, the blank is alternative ivory.

I used micromesh, then Meguiars PlastX polish to finish.

As for the "how", I'm currently in negotiations with Mr Beall, to see how much he'll pay me NOT to tell you

I thought about using my CNC mill to do this, somehow, but I would have had to invent or cobble together a rotary axis.

Then I spent about a day investigating whether I could get my C3 metal lathe to cut a thread with a pitch of 80 mm, but that wasn't going to happen.

I also spent (wasted) hours fiddling with spreadsheets full of trig, trying to work out what angles would give diamonds which fitted integrally into the size of the blank.

Then I stopped and thought, how the heck would craftsmen of 100 years ago done this?

So I drew a rectangle as long as the pattern, and as high as the circumference of the blank, and drew a line from one corner to half way up the other side (that gives a 30-60-90 degree triangle, which is a quarter of a generally pleasing diamond shape).

I used CorelDRAW, but any graphics program would help at this stage -
Make copies of the angled line until it has divided the rectangle, then copy the lines, flip them over, and you should have a diamond grid which will wrap around your blank. (See pics)

I left the diamonds proud because
1) I could turn them off if they didn't work out
2) the bushings would act as a depth-stop
3) I could see hassles at the end of the cuts. If you were cutting with a rotary tool, you could end short of the blank, with a nice rounded end to the cut, but I was going to use a saw.

I tried a scraping/scratching approach, rubbing a variety of tools against a guide held along the marked line, but they were all very fiddly.

Then I tried a shark saw (cheapo pull saw), but the tooth set meant it left two grooves, with an island in the middle. Finally I found an old dwarf saw (that's what it says on the box) which is what I used.

The whole exercise went a lot more smoothly than I anticipated - there are a couple of flaws, but the turned shoulders got rid of some, the clip hides another, and what's left are proof of a hand crafted item.

I found that it's important to keep the saw horizontal, and only cut on top of the blank - don't let the saw follow the lines around the blank, but rather rotate the blank so the saw doesn't change orientation, but moves along the lathe axis like a tool fixed in a tool holder.

The pictures feature my spare, backup, Plan B blank, which is why the blank pokes out the ends of the grid. The paper matched neatly to the blank I used.

Thanks for the interest,
Andrew

Awesome job of planing and executing.

outstanding effort andrew!! it should be well treasured.

Andrew,

Andrew Rose sat on a pin Andrew Rose I understand to meet the occasion this one being a delightful solution. Since in three years I too will have been married sixty years from my point of view the pen you have made is really beautiful.

The quilting effect is simple and detailed so well by hand (Mr Beall eat your heart out), well chosen kit (black and white as in wedding and all.

Thank you for your explanation recently a guy on a post in the IAP put up a series of pics of a guy making a pipe using 260 pics out of at least a thousand taken and I know full well the time it takes to document, photograph detailed work so I phoned the original author and expressed my admiration for his work (in Canada).

Do not have access to your phone number however congratulations on your presentation of the pen, your detailed methods. A particular mention for all who pester or seek info always get back immediately after someone bothers to them personally.

Enjoy the Anniversary with your family Andrew with kind best wishes Peter.

Hi Peter,

"Andrew Rose sat on a pin. Andrew rose." Ha ha!

'Rose', 'rows', 'roes' and 'rhos' all sound the same, and there are a stack of meanings for 'rose' and 'rows', so there's more material in there

260 photos ! Wow!

I have a few more pics and a video of boring out the hole in the cap, but that's because my dad will be as interested in the making of the pen, as the pen itself.

I remember seeing a discussion about the drill bits a while back, where some people felt that the 33/64 for the cap was a bit tight, and recommended a 13.3 mm instead, so I decided to bore the hole on the lathe, and test the tube for fit as I went.

One thing I really liked about this kit is the trim rings. You can hold them against the blank as you sneak up on the matching diameter, and feel when the blank is exactly the same size as the ring it will be sitting against. With other kits you have to measure one bit, then measure the blank, and you only find out if you have an exact match once you've pressed them together.

Cheers,
Andrew