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.

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.

Custom Binde

Several years a go I was asked to make up some Pelikan 100 binde's.  Well after blowing through a crap load of material I said no I could not do it.

That is the background of today's project.

I was at the market a bit ago and found this "old black pen"

I bought it because it had a 14k nib and according to everyone in antique markets it is worth a small kings ransom.

Now being a typical male I had a flashback to my earlier failure on the 100's and I figured what the heck.

This is not for the faint of heart because it involved material being removed.

So with a full face mask and upper body armor on I let her rip and lo and behold I got a pen that I really like a lot.

I hope you all like as well