Solid Titanium Retractable pen V5

[Hardy08]

After 6 months of work, here is the new version of my retractable nib pen (V5).

The external appearance of the pen is like a chimera of Pilot's MYU for its titanium body  and Lamy 2000 for its overall shape and clip.

On the inside of the pen, the nib retracts behind a spring loaded trap door, the nib mechanism is activated by rotating the section of 3/4 of turn, clockwise.

The filling mechanism is a piston filler which acts similarly as FountainBell's Bulkfiller holding a large amount of ink.

The nib is a cursive italic which was ground from a pelikan BB stainless steel nib, the feed is from an old french pen in ebonite.

 

 

The pen now features a more discreet trap door for the nib:

 

The piston system is basically the same than the other versions:

 

The ink window is a minimalistic polycarbonate round window which makes the job well:

 

This pen took so much time to design and build out of a single titanium rod: take a look at the titanium shavings!

 

My micro 12kg lathe/milling machine made the job surprisingly well even on Grade 5 titanium.

Some tricks had to be used, mainly for drilling procedures: slowing down spindle speed, only predrill holes at 2mm (drilling using progressively larger drillbits stucks them into the work), cooling the drill is also crucial (when you don't own special harware for this purpose you have to stop drilling and wait for it to cool which takes a long long time...). 

Here are some special setups:

 

Once machined, the hard part was to assemble titanium parts together... Titanium parts don't glide on each others they get simply stucked. To allow free gliding of the titanium moving parts I Had to cover them with acetal caps which required additional extra work. 

Here you can see the part which allows the section to turn onto the barrel: an acetal ring serves as interface between the section and the barrel:

 

I use this pen for 3 months now and I am very pleased with. Unlike the other versions in ebonite (V1,2,3) the inkflow is more consistent, nor too wet, nor to dry.

The pen is much more robust than the other versions although it is heavier it did not broke or deform when falling from my shirt pocket on concrete for example: the grade 5 titanium made it simply bounce with a few minor scratches.

 

Hope my journey to making this pen interested you.

Jeremy

 

Link to the other pens for comparison:

 

[mizgeorge]

I am in awe.

 

Amazing - and what a labour of love.

 

Kudos

[fabri00]

Very nice, congratulations for your work.

[Inspector]

Amazing work. I have never seen that method used for following a curve before. 

 

Pete

[alexwi]

Wow. Just WOW!

 

alex

[Aysedasi]

Stunning work. 

[Hardy08]

@mizgeorge thank you very much! This pen took 6 months to make. Some parts needed more than 20 operations on the mill and lathe to complete. When finaly assembly came, some parts had to be fully redesigned because of gliding problems with titanium...

@fabri00thank you for your encouragement!

@Inspector thank you for appreciating this post!

@Aysedasithank you very much!

[pscrybe]

This is so fascinating! The trap door looks much improved from your earlier pens. My partner was playing a Fallout game recently and I don't know why I feel like this pen would fit in as a cool, robust writing tool that could survive anything. 

[SoulSamurai]

That's amazing! Thank you for sharing photos and details of your work.

[markiv]

😱😇

[LeakyInk]

That is an awesome pen, great work. I am always jealous and amazed at people's talent and skill and I am very jealous with this one.

[fountainbel]

Congratulations Jeremy, impressive work !`

You surely are a gifted designer & craftsman !

Francis