A Dressed Up Set

I spent my weekend working on this pen set.  It is a M200 ballpoint and fountain pen.

A little bit of history on this set.  I have a good friend who has taken on his own to make me the best custom pen person there is.  I say on his own because I sure was sure not around when this vote was taken.

It always starts out the same little smile and a twinkle in his eye and the words "I have something to show you".

Nothing is ever anything that I can say "no problem" to at all because there is always some little twist that takes it from a very quick and easy to what the heck, I have to think in this for a while.

This set was one of those.  I have done lots of the 200 fountain pen binde but I have never worked on a ball point and my biggest fear is having to hand a customer back a bag of pen pieces and saying whoops.

I have had this set on my bench for I would say 3 months now because I was afraid to get it on to the lathe.

Well today was the day.  I would have a great looking pen or a pile of parts.  

Happy to report I don't have a bag of parts to return to my customer.

So I have to say thank you for always making me think outside the box.

Karin's M1000

I had not done a M1000 binde when Karin from the Cambridge Pen Breakfast who had seen my M800 and really liked it and asked me if I could do one on her M1000.

I said sure why not.  

Karin has a really good eye for color because this is one of the neatest binde I have done.

Such a nice nib on this one.

A really great pen.

My M800

It took me a while to get up the courage to do this one because is the most expensive pen that I have "cut" into.  I had some help from Chris Burton as well.

I took it slow and steady and in the end I was very pleased at how well it turned out.

If you hold it up to the light you can still see the piston moving.

A Couple M215's

It has been to long since I have been in the shop as we have been working at THIS all summer and early fall.  But everything is all put to bed and the woodpile is all stacked up and set to go.

This first one was a M215 I had got a bit ago but was just waiting for the right material to talk to me.

This was some material I got a long time ago.  It  takes a lot of fine shallow cuts to get a good job.

This second one started out as a desk pen that I got on an E bay auction a while ago.

It was large enough that I was able to get the binde out of it.

The pen was dried out and it has an air hole on one side but I thought it was sort of cool so I left the hole.

I have never seen this material in a pen before but I really liked it a lot. 

M600 Binde

I learned a few things about pen construction on doing this pen.

The green striped material is seamed and welded onto a green tube for the body.  I had always thought that the body was one solid unit.

The section is then welded into the green wrapped tube tube. 

The customer had chosen this color and I think it was a fine choice.

I really love the idea of dressing up these high quality pens and making them my own.

A Couple Of Dressed Up Birds

I got these two in the other day to have bindes made up for them.

They are both M200's

The colors were picked out by the customer and I think they turned out quite nice.

First up the black one.

Next the white one.