Tag: handcraft

Right after the period of Chinese new year, a new fountain pen with a new material has been finished.
Fountain pen with magnetic cap and ebonite barrel in blue color – Deep Sea.

We have chose ebonite from Japan which is considered one of the best quality ebonite in the world. Japanese ebonite have a solid texture, natural contrast in color and have a high purity when cheap ebonite always have some metal dust inside. Those unwanted metal pieces will constitute unexpected / uncontrollable metallic shiny points affecting the outcome and outlook of the finished product.

Working on ebonite will need a sharp knife/gouge and always needed to be sharpened in the gouging process. And they are quite smelly when it get heat and powderized.

Why use ebonite on fountain pen?

Ebonite is a material can be found in the natural world, more common be called as “hard rubber”. More technical detail may be found on wiki.
Ebonite can absorb oil and sweat from human hand and balance them between pen and hand. This process can avoid slip of pen and increase friction between pen and hand. It provide better handle when writing for a long time.

The price of raw material of Japanese ebonite is 5-8 times of same quantity of acrylic or polyester resin. It is a real luxury material to use in comparison.

This ebonite barrel has been polished for 12 times on each side (barrel and cap) and non-waxed. Ebonite normally can’t give shiny surface like acrylic and polyester resin unless coat with wax. However if it is waxed, which may prevent the natural function of ebonite as aforesaid. So we left it unwaxed. If you love shiny surface on ebonite, you may coat it simply with wax for car and keep polish it once a year if it have been used frequently.

Let’s check out some photos.

 

The barrel on the lathe. This is a 550W manual wood lathe and which should be enough for most work for fountain except metal parts.

Gouging in process, slow and easy.
Ebonite pattern and color. We picked deep blue for this time.

Lower contrast provide a low profile but luxury feeling.

Finish with 8 level sanding and 12 times polishing. (Face side)

The back side.
Ebonite can provide some degree of shiny surface after polishing.
This is the pattern on the cap side.

Standard pose for fountain pen.

Uncapped pose

There are magnets on both sides of pen body.

We have attached a two tone German Bock F nib on the Deep Sea instead of an IPG nib.

Other than deep blue there are also yellow-green ebonite available.
Custom order welcome.

Thank for reading.
Please feel free to ask any question. Comment welcome.

Shop link