Repurposed Pen Box

I was making a box to store some lighting-related stuff. The idea was to cut foam inlays for the box to hold the bits. I was actually working on this box concurrently with my recent gaming accessory box, and so it was part of the same batch of experiments (such as using the same batch of resin for the inlay). However I somehow made a mistake when programming the G-code and only made it 3cm deep instead of the intended 5cm deep, and I didn't even realise it until I was cutting the foam. So I decided to use it to store some of my nicer pens that don't have their own proper box instead.

From left: Noodler's Konrad Dixie No. 10 Methuselah, FPR Himalaya green ebonite, FPR Himalaya amethyst purple acrylic, Parker 51, Omas 361, Pilot Elite, Lamy Scribble, Aurora 98 Archivi Storici, Rotring Esprit retractable graphite, Pilot Decimo dark grey.

I was using the leftover 20mm foam from when I made a foam insert for a statue. I thought it would be cool to have a protective piece of foam actually attached to the lid rather than have one sit on top of the contents, so I inlet a large pocket inside the lid. Unfortunately the plywood I was using was just over 5mm thick, and with the resin inlay on the outside I was afraid to cut out too much incase the lid became too flimsy, so I only cut the pocket for the foam to a little under 3mm deep. Which is quite thin, but still probably enough foam to protect the contents?

I glued in a sheet of foam, and then trimmed it flush on my hot wire cutter.

Since the box interior was 30mm deep and I was using 20mm thick foam, I had to actually slice one piece in half, down to around 10mm thick, to make up the 30mm thickness. This would be the bottom piece. I did this by sandwitching it between two pieces of wood, marking the line I wanted to cut, standing the wood-foam-wood sandwitch on it's side, and carefully running it along the fence on the hot wire table while trying to keep it upright so the wire would cut a consistent thickness.

I found that the foam insert in the lid actually catches slightly on the foam inside the box, creating resistance to closing. In fact the lid tends to "bounce back" after closing, leaving it open by a few mm. It can be rather hard to get it to fully close. Initially this was MUCH worse; it was hard to close at all and impossible to get it to stay completely closed. But I cut the inner piece of foam a bit lower and now it's much better, but still annoying. I'm not sure what the best solution is, perhaps I can find a way to cut the lid insert to be slightly thinner than the recess, or I just need to cut the body inserts to a bit lower.

I printed a template for the cutouts for the main piece of foam. I cut the inner pieces out of the template, then pinned the template to the foam with tailor pins.

I then cut out the pieces of foam on my wire cutter. This was a little fiddly as I had left very little material for the walls, so the whole block lost it's structural strength very quickly, making it harder to manouver across the wire cutting table.

I probably got too greedy and tried to fit in too many pens. The wood is also probably too thin, and annoyingly the lid is slightly bowed out - I really want to use solid, stabilized wood in the future, but that's a lot of work and I'm not really set up to process wood properly. Well, overall this box came out OK and it's nice to have a better storage solution for some of my pens.

Starting Additive Manufacturing

I finally pulled the trigger and bought myself a 3D printer. My first project was to print a replacement pen body for my Levenger L-Tech. The original (which I believe is made of brass) is fairly heavy, but more importantly it's poorly balanced (at least for my hand).

It's basically just a threaded tube, but it was still a little tricky to design; the hardest part was the section-body threading. In fact I never quite got it right; in the end I got it "close enough" that I was able to brute-force the section into the threads.

The cap-body threads were a lot easier since I designed them both and didn't need to match existing threads. It's actually a four-start thread; it only takes one and a quarter turns to cap and uncap (it should probably be one and a half, but the cap doesn't quite screw all the way down before it seals on the section).

It was printed in red PLA because that's what came with the printer. Layer hight was set to 0.06mm, and infill was 100%. I did not use supports or a raft. The body and cap were sanded to smooth them a little, but I couldn't get rid of some of the blemishes (not without more work than I wanted to put in).

I consider this a prototype; it was certainly a learning experience... by which I mean that I learned 3D printing might not be as simple as I was originally hoping it would be. That's hoping, not expecting. But hey, at least I was able to create something of my own in just a few days, which is more than I managed with the (probably cursed) CNC machine.

While I'd like to make some improvements to this design, I might just jump to trying to make my own section instead. Before that I think I need to muck about with the software; the printer comes with a built-in slicer, which is cool, but the results I'm getting from it don't look as good as the already-sliced models that it was pre-loaded with, making me think that I might get better results with a better slicer or by mucking about with the print settings a little more.

Vanished Point

I recently picked up a Pilot Capless Decimo - the Japanese-market version of the Vanishing Point Decimo. I'd heard that Japanese nib sized were smaller than Western nibs, so I picked up a medium assuming it would be about a fine. Unfortunately what I found was that the nib put down a much thicker line than I had been expecting. Plus it was insanely wet; I was getting a LOT of feathering, and I used up the ink cartridge in a single week of mild note-taking - in contrast, the Parker Vector fine nib I had been using previously has lasted over a month so far on the original cartridge, and it's still going.

Part of the problem might have been my fault; I'm unused to soft nibs (despite this being the steel nibbed version it's still quite soft) and I think I damaged the nib a little when I was first trying it out. Nothing that couldn't be repaired by someone who knew what they were doing, but, well...

... well that's what the Internet is for, right? Basically, I decided to try to "improve" the nib myself. Yes, I would probably screw it up, but I figured if I didn't like the pen as it was then what did I have to loose? It would be a learning experience, right?


First I tried to force the tines closer together to reduce the ink flow; I ended up crossing them over then aligning them as best I could. Then I sanded down the sides with 1500 grit sandpaper, then the top, then I tried to knock off the corners and round the edges before smoothing everything with the micromesh.

I actually had to sand then smooth several times. After all that the nib now runs much finer and much dryer (perhaps a little too dry), so technically I achieved my goals. However it is also VERY scratchy now, especially on the upstroke; a far cry from the original silky-smooth performance. Despite the scratchiness, I actually like it more now than before. Perhaps that's just because I'm more attached to it now after having worked on it myself? Hard to say, but the finer, dryer line is much more practical for the pen's intended use, so there is that. Perhaps I'll try to smooth it out a bit more another time, but I'll do a little writing with it first to see how it does in real life.

Ultimately if I can't get it to a use-able state I might spring for a new one; I'm hoping to avoid having to do that, but I do like the pen enough that I would consider it if necessary.