Author: newtonpens

Metal Lathe is up and going!

That’s right! I got the metal lathe going! And it’s freaking awesome!

No idea what I’m talking about? Then read this great page all about metal lathes (view article here) so you can understand why I’m so excited.

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I have ONE little boring bar that a buddy gave me to play with – the same guy who loaned me his engine hoist to get the lathe up on the stand. He’s got a 50 year old metal lathe in his shop that he uses to turn stuff round. Cool guy, has a million ideas for cool lathe projects too, so talking to him is always fun.

Speaking of, here are my first two pens done up on the new lathe. The sections were done on the wood lathe, b/c the metal lathe was still on the floor at the time. :) I need more tooling to be able to make a section the way I’ll want, I’m sure.

These are both student pens, by the way.
http://newtonpens.wo…green-and-keen/

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And the other one…
http://newtonpens.wo…com/blue-crush/ carlee-2.jpg?w=1200&h=

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This is so much fun! I did both barrels and caps in just a couple of hours tonight. :D

Scholarships went out!!

Yeeha!  I gave the two scholarships out tonight.  I only stuttered once when I lost my place, but I did great!  😀  My hands were shaking like MAD, but nobody could see that behind the podium.  That felt really good to give those out.

I also just BARELY finished two pens tonight, before graduation, for those two kids.

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With a bottle of Noodler’s FPN Van Gogh Starry Night Blue and Noodler’s Black, and some new pouches made by my awesome wife.
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Mountain Pine school colors – red and white.

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This also means I have two names for two of my pen designs.  🙂

Newton Pens Scholarship and… flex?

Well, the scholarship money has been transferred to the school and all the applications have come in. I’m going to spend this week with the other teachers reading through them all and picking the 2 or 4 most deserving. There are only 8-10 applications so hopefully it won’t be TOO challenging. 🙂 I’m so excited and proud to be able to give this money away.

The one thing I’m nervous about though, my hands shake a little thinking about it, is getting up on stage at graduation, in front of 2-3 thousand people. YES. Thousand. Mountain Pine may only have about 40 seniors graduating, but everybody comes to the graduation. My first year at MP I couldn’t believe how many people were in the convention center for graduation. I expect it to be the same this year. Yikes. All worth it, in the end, to see my hard work hanging on a wall in one of those beautiful diploma frames, so it will be okay as long as I can keep my voice steady. 😛 My hands may shake off of my arms, but the voice has to be steady. OOohhh…. breathe Newton…. 🙂

And then there’s a little experiment I performed for a customer of mine. When he asked I told him, I said I might not do a very good job, I won’t charge you for the work, only the nib itself. He said it was worth $100 bucks for the nib to see what I could do. Okay. Awesome. So I started flexing a 14k nib. It’s not as soft as a vintage 14k flexy, like on my old Diamond Point or Swan, but more like a vintage Pelikan. It’s soft when you write with it – but certainly no wet noodle. I may end up shaving some more off the sides. I want him to play with it for a while first before I make any more changes. He may love it. 🙂

Cleaning the shop

So my giant metal lathe will be here Wednesday afternoon, and I just got finished cleaning up in the shop.  Sunday afternoon and then a few more hours tonight.  It took forever to put all those blanks back up there and in a somewhat organized manner too.  Acrylics, ebonite, alumilite, and then by color.  Polyresins and wood are off to the side…