2019 POTD Thread Archive

[GoceKU]

Last few days i've been working hard on the interior on the little niva, i decided to use this VDO truck radio, for its durability, also installed additional gauges, for engine vacuum and Air/Fuel ratio i also mounted the LPG switch to the side. The interior is not coming as nicely as the exterior, i've ordered new back panels for the rear seats and trunk but i have to wait for them to came from Russia. I also started on the mounts for the front seats, the big bump in the middle for the gearbox and transfer case is making it impossible to fit good wide comfortable seats. And i don't want it to be a 2 seater only.

 

[stioc]

I posted this in another thread that will get buried so figured I'd post here. I needed a small form tool to make a convex shape on the inside of a ring so I started making a small boring bar and the insert. The boring bar is a 5/16" stock of 12L14 and the insert is a broken #1 HSS center drill shaped using a diamond bit in a Dremel.

I think I'll face it off a bit more and use a shorter set screw so the bar doesn't stick out as much and I'll turn the diameter down at the top and of course cut off the other end of the insert bit too.

 

[tmenyc]

This is not as photogenic or dramatic as the Niva Saga, but it was my first real project in the work for which I bought my Logan 820.
The Logan was bought last winter to up my game as a vintage fountain pen restorer. It's been a hobby for years, grew into a thriving business that I call my second job, and now I'm focusing on keeping it manageable while I spend the last couple of years in full-time executive work. I wanted to find a niche I could call my own in the already fine niche arena of vintage pen restoration. To my knowledge, although there are lathes out there, most of them are used for new pen manufacture. A few restorers have lathes, but no one in the world that I know of makes parts to sell to other restorers or the public. So, it was time to start. I got the lathe, have been climbing the learning curve, making my trials and errors and issues with the bench grinder pretty public, but today all the pieces of creating my first pen part came together.
By way of explanation, most vintage fountain pens hold their ink in latex sacs, which are glued with shellac to a part called the sac nipple, which is integral to the shaped unit that holds the nib and the feed, a ribbed piece that transports ink from the sac to the nib in very small amounts. The shaped unit is called the gripping section, because it's the part you hold to write with. Simple enough, except that vintage fountain pens had several points of potential failure, most in that gripping section. The sac nipple breaks easily, particularly in a 75+ year old pen; it's generally 20-30 thou thick and made of either celluloid, the first synthetic plastic, or ebonite, vulcanized hard rubber. Modern pens' sections, whole pens, in fact, are usually of acrylic resins, and have the same issues. The good part for me is that while lots of amateur restorers can change the sacs and make all kinds of adjustments, only a pro with a lathe can make a new sac nipple.

For context, this is my hang-around-the-desk-these-days pen, a 1940s Esterbrook, they were the pre-ballpoint Bics of them all. On the right is the pen out of its barrel and cap: latex sac glued to sac nipple, gripping section, nib. The business end of a fountain pen.


So today I made my first sac nipple, of white delrin (in future I'll use black, but I wanted to see what I was doing): the feed sticking out in the middle picture is OD .227, I made the sleeve with .020 walls from a 3/8" x 2" length of delrin turned down with CCGT, and since the ID of the gripping section was around .230, had to face off the remains of the old part, then drill and bore it out to fit the .270 OD of the new sac nipple. Took me a couple of tries to get the order of operations straight, but it finally worked. This one is friction fit, future ones will have a thin epoxy layer.


Sac nipples are just the beginning for me, but a substantial beginning. I probably have the purchase price of the lathe here in pens waiting for them and then get sold. Gotta admit I'm pretty happy.
Thanks for reading.

Tim

 

[silverhawk]

This is not as photogenic or dramatic as the Niva Saga, but it was my first real project in the work for which I bought my Logan 820.
The Logan was bought last winter to up my game as a vintage fountain pen restorer. It's been a hobby for years, grew into a thriving business that I call my second job, and now I'm focusing on keeping it manageable while I spend the last couple of years in full-time executive work. I wanted to find a niche I could call my own in the already fine niche arena of vintage pen restoration. To my knowledge, although there are lathes out there, most of them are used for new pen manufacture. A few restorers have lathes, but no one in the world that I know of makes parts to sell to other restorers or the public. So, it was time to start. I got the lathe, have been climbing the learning curve, making my trials and errors and issues with the bench grinder pretty public, but today all the pieces of creating my first pen part came together.
By way of explanation, most vintage fountain pens hold their ink in latex sacs, which are glued with shellac to a part called the sac nipple, which is integral to the shaped unit that holds the nib and the feed, a ribbed piece that transports ink from the sac to the nib in very small amounts. The shaped unit is called the gripping section, because it's the part you hold to write with. Simple enough, except that vintage fountain pens had several points of potential failure, most in that gripping section. The sac nipple breaks easily, particularly in a 75+ year old pen; it's generally 40-60 thou thick and made of either celluloid, the first synthetic plastic, or ebonite, vulcanized hard rubber. Modern pens' sections, whole pens, in fact, are usually of acrylic resins, and have the same issues. The good part for me is that while lots of amateur restorers can change the sacs and make all kinds of adjustments, only a pro with a lathe can make a new sac nipple.

For context, this is my hang-around-the-desk-these-days pen, a 1940s Esterbrook, they were the pre-ballpoint Bics of them all. On the right is the pen out of its barrel and cap: latex sac glued to sac nipple, gripping section, nib. The business end of a fountain pen.
View attachment 300486View attachment 300485

So today I made my first sac nipple, of white delrin (in future I'll use black, but I wanted to see what I was doing): the feed sticking out in the middle picture is OD .227, I made the sleeve with .020 walls from a 3/8" x 2" length of delrin turned down with CCGT, and since the ID of the gripping section was around .230, had to face off the remains of the old part, then drill and bore it out to fit the .270 OD of the new sac nipple. Took me a couple of tries to get the order of operations straight, but it finally worked. This one is friction fit, future ones will have a thin epoxy layer.

View attachment 300482View attachment 300483View attachment 300484
Sac nipples are just the beginning for me, but a substantial beginning. I probably have the purchase price of the lathe here in pens waiting for them and then get sold. Gotta admit I'm pretty happy.
Thanks for reading.

Tim

This is awesome! Those are some beautiful pens!

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

 

[francist]

What in interesting business, who would have thought? I remember my dad talking about Esterbrook pens, I think he liked them. I still have one of the desk sets that used to sit on his big wooden desk at his car dealership. How many people signed their fortunes away for a new Buick with those I'll never know, but I suspect quite a few!

Thanks for sharing that most interesting work.

-frank

 

[tmenyc]

Thanks, Frank. Is the set useable/used? I'll restore it for you! Re "Who would have thought?" I'd be swamped if I went public with repairs in addition to the already public sales of restored pens. I think in part it's nostalgia for the pre-computer days, but for whatever reasons new and vintage fountain pen use is growing steadily, and although most of that is new pens, demand for vintage is also growing, although like vintage cars, the number of useable vintage pens shrinks daily. Happily for me, every one of them needs restoration before it can be used.

Tim

 

[francist]

Thanks, Frank. Is the set useable/used?

Oh yeah, it still works. I used to use them occasionally just for kicks. I'm thinking it's from the early '60's or so, and not a fountain pen per se but still the nib style. And an Esterbrook, no less.





Funny story about my Dad -- before he bought the GM dealership he did a number of things to keep the rapidly expanding family afloat. One of them was selling the new-fangled ballpoint pens in vending machines. I think they cost a nickel, and you got a pen should you just happen to be walking around and think "dang, I sure could use a pen about now..". Anyway, the venture was short-lived and I don't think they ever sold any. We had the boxes of stock for years -- the cheapest, ugliest, and most gawd-awful writing implements ever made. I wish I had one of them now, I can still see the box of hundreds of the things...

-frank

 

[MontanaLon]

When I was moving my mill, I inadvertently busted the hinges on the belt cover. Pot metal just can't take the sorts of force I applied to them while reinstalling them, they both split through the screw holes on the bottom half of the hinge. So I used the mill to make the half that broke and got them reinstalled. At some point I may go back and do the center pieces and the top halves that didn't break but most likely not for a while.

I need to pick up a machinery's handbook. Experimenting to get the right RPM and DOC is just not the way to go.

 

[tmenyc]

Oh yeah, it still works. I used to use them occasionally just for kicks. I'm thinking it's from the early '60's or so, and not a fountain pen per se but still the nib style. And an Esterbrook, no less.

Frank, that's a Dipless from the 1940s! Its bakelite base is filled from a bottle of ink, and ink came in quarts then, but the pen itself has a reservoir above the screw-in nib that filled by capillary action up from the base. In the reservoir's base is a layer of very skinny plastic hairs that transmitted the ink from the bottle to the nib. Very cool indeed. Those nibs are great writers. Great story about the ballpoints; they lost that battle but won the war.
Enjoy it!

Tim

 

[f350ca]

Neat work Tim, machining takes all forms. I've made a number of fountain pens from the readily available kits, have one on the table here that I use daily, love the feel of a fountain pen.
Why do they cut the ribs in the section under the nib, Im guessing something to do with metering the ink flow.

Greg