I'm Curious, How Many Of Us Have Kaigelu 316's?

[Contax1961]

Hi, I forgive a second OT, could someone tell me if the drive is replaceable with SCHMIDT K6? thanks in advance

Riccardo

[richardandtracy]

I don't know. It may be too long, however there is about 6mm of unused hole inside the finial, so it may well fit, depending on how much longer the K6 is.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[Contax1961]

I don't know. It may be too long, however there is about 6mm of unused hole inside the finial, so it may well fit, depending on how much longer the K6 is.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

Thanks Richard, my doubt is if it is screwed, do not know the extent, but its original does not have a good grip and I would replace it.

Riccardo

[Contax1961]

Hi Richard, there is news? I look forward to seeing your work!

Riccardo

[richardandtracy]

Weather. Too cold. I shattered several machining them back.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

[Contax1961]

Weather. Too cold. I shattered several machining them back.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

tks Regards Riccardo

[dcwaites]

Weather. Too cold. I shattered several machining them back.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

 

Move. To Aus. The weather's better and the politics currently more entertaining...

[richardandtracy]

At last the weather has warmed up.

While it was cold I tried using a sander to machine off the excess moulded length. If I used rigid tooling to hold them, I had 100% shatter. When holding them by hand it was difficult to control the length. The net result was that after 50 I stopped and waited for the weather to warm up. When my workshop reached 8-10C I tried to reduce the length on the lathe and got a 50% shatter rate. 10-12C and it dropped to about 10%, and above 12C I've had a zero failure rate.

 

Anyway, now it is warmer:

I have finished 60 finials that are the right size and are as good as I can get. Their length is 15 +/- 0.05mm long prior to polishing.

 

I have a further 43 finials where I have to finish polishing and will do so in the next few days (weather permitting). These ones are between 14.5 and 14.95mm (so less than 0.5mm undersize), mostly due to sanding the finials off too much when cold, though 10 are due to not filling the moulds enough. Unless you hold the pen & finial against another of full size, I doubt if this undersize is noticeable.

There are 19 finials in the range 14.0 to 14.45mm long, all due to over enthusiastic sanding when cold. These need to be squared off in the lathe and polished.

I have a final 11 finals which are waste, as the length is 13-13.95mm. Don't think I'll bother polishing these.

 

I also have about 150 finials worth of waste resin, where the moulding was wrong, the finial shattered in the cold or just was distorted for some reason. I have been very surprised by the high wastage rate - though I think I've learnt enough to reduce it in the future.

With about 3grams of resin in each casting, mould temperature is important, and I've been getting a bit of stickiness on the outside of the resin. This is all machined off except on the spigot. It eventually cures solid (after about 3 months, and all current finials are that old!) but to stop it in the future I think I'll have to use my wife's metal clay kiln to pre-heat the moulds and bake the mouldings to 50C for an hour to speed the mould surface cure and hopefully prevent any stickiness. On the one larger moulding I have done, the exotherm from the mass of resin I used (about 10grams) prevented this stickiness.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

[Contax1961]

Great news, we look forward Regards Richard

[richardandtracy]

I have put a classified up selling them if you want any.

 

Richard.

[Contax1961]

I have put a classified up selling them if you want any.

 

Richard.

where you can buy? you can send an MP with your link? thanks in advance

Riccardo

[richardandtracy]

Link (which I was trying to avoid): https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/classifieds/item/32753-kaigelu-k316-replacement-barrel-finials-x-60/

 

Richard

[garyc]

Richard,

 

are the original finials very hard to remove?

 

Are Flounder's instructions the best method (http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/kaigelu-316.html)?

 

I'll probably spring for a couple if there's no risk of damaging the barrel.

[richardandtracy]

Not sure I know a 'Best' method, but that's the one that works for me. I tend to use epoxy as the adhesive though. I have made the finials so that they should fit in all K316's, but I don't really know the tolerance on the size of the bore, so have erred on making a slightly sloppy fit on my trial Charcoal K316. This means a gap filling adhesive is better - which is why I tend to keep away from shellac. Shellac may need quite a few coats before it gets thick enough to stick.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[garyc]

OK, I've sent a PM.

 

Flounder mentions boring out the finial so the barrel will accommodate a full sized long cartridge. Is that worth doing, do you think? I'm actually happy with the converter as it is, but having the option might be useful (say, if I want to use the pen on holiday and not bother to take bottled ink).

[richardandtracy]

I would be very cautious about this.

The finial spigot is quite thin (about 1mm thick) and boring out the polyester material will weaken it further. To be honest, I would not recommend it as you'll be relying on the adhesive bond between the barrel & finial ring, and then between the finial and the ring. These two joints will be in cleavage if you try knocking the finial off, and few adhesives are very good in that situation.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

[garyc]

I'll leave well alone in that case!

 

Thanks,

Gary

[Flounder]

Gary, Richard

 

If you recall, Richard's first batch of finials was not cast in quantity from Johnny-come-lately polyester that the kids love so much, with their 'rock-n-roll' 8 tracks and Communist hair. They were individually turned on a lathe from a solid rod of acrylic.

 

Oh yeah - and the shellac was on the thick side (needed heating to liquify!). I just felt an acrylic finial was something worth having the option to retain, if the rest of the barrel was trashed. That's why I went with a releasable adhesive.

 

[edited for line breaks]

Edited March 12, 2015 by Flounder

[richardandtracy]

I wish I could get acrylic to cast the finials from. Unfortunately one or more of the components is fairly poisonous, and the uncured resin components is theoretically only available to industry. In practice, the poisonous monomer component is used in quite a range of 'Legal Highs' at the moment, with a fatality rate considerably in excess of many Class A drugs. I can understand why it's not considered safe for the retail market.

 

I have selected an acrylic modified polyester, so it is less brittle than standard polyester, but it is not up to the toughness of acrylic, and is orders of magnitude more brittle than the polyurethane I tried to begin with. I just wish the polyurethane was hard enough to polish, but it wasn't.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

[Flounder]

In case it came across wrong - I wasn't denigrating Richard for sparing himself a poisoning epidemic on our behalf, just trying to explain why I felt okay boring out the acrylic finial he turned for me!

 

A thought occurs - a lot of short international carts are quite a tapered shape. In my bored out finial (which is still pretty close to 1mm thick) there's a bit of wiggle room for the tapered, cart-nipple end. Would 2 carts back to back fit?

 

If not, it's not really an issue (taking carts on holiday is simple enough outside the pen), and the advantages of casting en-masse certainly outweigh any reduction in outright strength.