If you missed last night’s webcast, is was recorded. We covered the Stilwell in detail, along with many other Edison updates…new prototypes, future plans, etc…
There is a new pen model that is almost ready for consumption!
I have a few teaser photos to share….
You can probably tell from the photos above that this will be an overlay pen…a first for Edison.
I have a few minor finishing touches to put on this pen early this coming week, so here’s the plan….
I will host a live webcast to announce this pen this week on Wednesday the 12th, at 9:00 pm EDT. I will share all photos, videos, and answer all questions regarding this pen. You can watch this on my Webcam Page, or my Ustream.tv page, so tune in!
Then the official launch of this pen will be either Wednesday night after the broadcast (if I’m not too exhausted) or first thing Thursday morning.
I’ve never been so excited about a new pen model! It’s taken a lot of restraint to not announce this pen earlier, but I really need to make sure that all the details are ironed out.
So keep your ear to the ground, and I hope to see lots of you Wednesday night!
The vast majority of my business without a doubt is fountain pens. But I do get plenty of orders for rollerballs.
In the past, my rollerball sections have been fine. They were injected plastic, always black with gold or rhodium trim. Nothing wrong with this at all. But here’s what I didn’t like about them….I was not manufacturing them. I was outsourcing the sections. When possible, I really like to make sure that I manufacture every part on my pens, with the nib and usually the clip being obvious exceptions.
Well, I recently was able to devote some time to perfecting the manufacturing of my rollerball sections.
When I manufactured these, here’s the changes that I made…
The new rollerball sections are not limited to black. I can now make a rollerball section to match the material of the pen. In my opinion, this makes a huge difference in the overall look of the pen.
The section is more slender. The old rollerball sections were a little thick and clunky.
The rollerball refills are Schmidt 5888’s, and Schmidt 888’s, which have always been my favorite. In mediums, I have Blue, Black, Red, Green, Turquoise, Magenta, Purple, Orange, and Light Green. In fines, I have Blue and Black. I’m looking for even more selection.
For those who prefer a ballpoint, I have only a medium point black refill for now.
Below is a photo of a Morgan rollerball in Red/Black ebonite with the new section.
The metal tips can be gold or rhodium to match any material.
I’ll be adding more and more photos to the Rollerball Page very soon, but in the meatime, any of my pens can be customized to become a rollerball, and any material that we can dream up can be used.
I also have rollerball refills of various lengths. If someone wanted to customize a pen to be shorter, like a pocket pen or a smaller pen for a purse, we can customize in any way.
As a special introductory price, I’m going to sell these through the month of October for $175.
Then beginning in November, price will go to $200. These prices are the same for any model of pen that you might be interested in.
Additionally, I had someone ask a good question…These rollerball sections will fit into my fountain pen bodies. So if you wanted to buy a fountain pen that would have an extra rollerball section, this is no problem. I haven’t determined the exact price of the rollerball section only, but I will soon.
In the past, I’ve had cast sterling snake clips, but truth be told, I was only OK with their designs.
I recently enlisted the help of a friend to create some custom snake clips to my specifications and design.
I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out.
They wrap around the cap of a Huron or Glenmont. Since they are not attached all the way around the cap, they are adjustable to a degree to make a perfect fit.
They are probably not all that functional, outside of keeping a pen from rolling off of a desk. They are more decorative. I wouldn’t recommend slipping the clips over a real thick pocket, as they might bend. However, being sterling silver, they can easily be moved back into tension.
The clip is shown below in a black acrylic pen with a satin finish.
Being silver, I don’t recommend these clips going onto an ebonite pen. The ebonite outgassing will tarnish the clip. However, the black acrylic that you see above is a perfect “faux” ebonite. It’s rather soft, and not at all brittle like most acrylics. When a pen is finished in this acrylic, I can’t tell the difference between this and ebonite without smelling.
This clip looks great with black acrylic. I have trouble picturing this clip on something with grain, or a wild material, as your eye would be divided between the material and the clip. However, I can see this clip with some other solid colors…blue, red, green, etc….
I’m pround to announce a collaboration between Edison and Chatterley Pens.
In about 2 weeks, I will officially announce "Grande" versions of a couple of my pens.
As the name implies, these will be larger versions.
I have completed an early Limited Edition of 18 Huron Grande pens for Chatterley Pens. These pens are made from Ivory Celluloid.
This Ivory Celluloid is getting scarce, and will be completely gone very soon, if it’s not already gone from my supplier.
This is a larger pen, at about 6.5" capped, and 5.5" uncapped.
This pen in Ivory Celluloid will only be available from Chatterley Pens. They are not for sale here. I will not be making anymore Huron Grande pens from this Ivory Celluloid.
Please visit Chatterley Pens at www.pentime.com for more more details.
I always love it when a customer approaches me with new ideas, designs, filling systems, and challenges to consider.
I had a customer speak to me about a blow filler.
This is a filling system that was used very early in the history of pens. I’m not sure that it was a real lucrative filling system, as I’ve never seen one live, but it turned out to be very interesting and certainly fun.
With a blow filler, there is a sac attached to the section or housing which holds the ink. This is just like any other typical pen incorporating a sac as the reservoir, such as a lever filler, button filler, crescent filler, etc.
Each of these sac filled pens incorporate some way of compressing the sac. When you dip the pen in ink, compress the sac and then release, the result of the sac returning to it’s shape will cause a vacuum resulting in ink being drawn into the sac.
In the case of a lever filler, there is a pressure bar that compresses the sac, activated by a lever. With a button filler, there is a pressure bar activated by a button on the bottom of the pen, with a crescent filler, the same applies, and you can guess what activates the pressure bar.
So this pen fills the same way, but with an incredibly simple method of compressing the sac.
How does this pen fill?
There is a very small hole drilled into the bottom of the barrel, which is visible in the photos below.
The section threads are made very precise, to the point of where they are airtight.
This seals the barrel internally.
So to fill the pen, you insert the nib into an ink reservoir, and blow into this hole on the back of the barrel.
Since the interior of the barrel is sealed, blowing into the barrel increases pressure, causing the sac to compress.
When you stop blowing, the sac decompresses, drawing ink into the sac.
Two or three cycles of blowing into the back of the barrel will fill the pen completely.
The blowfillers of the past would typically not have an ink window. The customer who ordered this pen wanted some kind of way of knowing where the ink level was. We went with an ink window, and also a clear sac. This makes it easy to determine when it’s time to refill.
This pen was also made from original Sheaffer Crimson stock. Very hard to find.
This was a seriously fun pen to make. It was really nice to revive a design from a very long time ago!
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