Author: newtonpens

Warranty Work

Yep – sometimes it happens.  A part breaks and needs to be taken care of.

This is one of my kickstarter pens.  The barrel broke at the threads – customer said possibly due to over tightening of the cap onto the barrel.  I think there may have been a bit of a gap between the section and inner cap, allowing for more stress on the barrel as well.  The section broke while getting it and the piece of the barrel out of the cap.  Oops.  😉  Either way – I made a new section and barrel.  The barrel is a bit thicker at the threads, too.  Shouldn’t have any more problems, but if so it’s covered.  😉

2012 Dallas Pen Show

WOW had a great time and met lots of awesome people.

Sold a pen and bought a pen – an old Wahl I found at Sherrell Tyree’s table.  She’s an awesome lady and gave me a great deal!

I probably spent too much time with Mike and Lisa from Vanness Pen Shop from Little Rock, Arkansas, but who can blame me?  😉  I had a good time visiting with Susan and John, the awesome folks from Pendemonium, the people from Toys from the Attic, Henry Simpole, another pen turner named George, and MANY many other really great people.  Too many to list.

I got a chance to see many pens and look at fit and finish which on most is amazing, and on others… well, I was surprised at how poor it was.

Talked with the ladies from Pen World!  Very cool!  They might do a bit of a write up on me some time.  They took a couple of my pens with them to take pictures of.  I’m excited about that.

Also met a very nice kid who has started making his own ink!  I bought a bottle of the Leviathan Green.  Really really pretty stuff.  If I had brought more money I would have bought all five colors.  Scribal Work Shop’s Cryptid Inks.

Can’t wait to go again next year and I’m really excited for the Arkansas Show coming up in a few months!

 

I GOT A NOTE! :)

All this time of making and giving out pens, working (and it is work) to get notes FROM the kids to say thank you to the person who bought their twin pen, I had no idea how much it would warm my heart to get a note of my own from a kid.

It wasn’t a fountain pen though, but a big chunky pencil…
A guy emailed me asking what I thought of those big chunky pencils, that he wanted one for his daughter, and I had one laying around, no plans for it, that I had just made, so I told him to give me his postal and I’d send it down for her to have.

I got this note in the mail today.  VERY cool.  😀

Contest – for a pen!

So with all this business about selling raffle tickets to cut my hair, it’s been suggested a couple times that I should off one of my pens.  I think that sounds pretty awesome – so here it is.

UPDATE! That’s not it. If this yellow and purple button filler doesn’t do it for you – you’ll have the option to have a custom pen made instead. Your choice! And only for the cost of one . Of course you can buy more if you’d like. 😉

For $10 you buy a – when you send payment (via paypal) write a number in the comments section.  1-100.  I’ll use one of those random number generators out there on the interweb to pick a number, and whoever picks the closest number will win the pen!

How do you know you didn’t pick the same number as 10 other people?  I’m not sure – post it in the replies area below?  If we do end up with a couple people who pick the same number, we can have a quick redo where those two or three people each pick a new number and then I do the number picker again.

Sound good?  If so you can send $10 to [email protected] via paypal.

Where does the money go?  I’ll buy more pens for my students.  I gave away almost all 80 pens yesterday (and the rest today) and this money will go towards buying more pens for my students.  Any extra money will go towards art class supplies.

I think that’s it.  If you have any questions or suggestions please shoot me an email – [email protected]

So how did the other teachers react to all the fountain pens?  Well, my seventh graders are enjoying the pens a little too much.  I think some ink has taken flight.  8-(    Oh well, they’ll learn.

END TIME:  Let’s give it two weeks.  September 19 at 7pm, 9pm if I’m stuck in traffic or something silly, I’ll announce the winner on the blog.  🙂

Numbers picked so far. I’ll put them here for easy reference so you don’t need to dig through the responses. 🙂  Whoever gets closest without going over is the winner.
4 – 7 – 9 – 11 – 13 – 14 – 15 – 21 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 27 – 29 – 30 – 33 – 37 – 40 – 41 – 46 – 47 – 50 – 53 – 57 – 59 – 62 – 66 – 69 – 73 – 74 – 75 – 81 – 82 – 88 – 91 – 96

Giving away pens and selling my hair.

So I finally got to a comfortable spot in my classes where I could start giving away those fountain pens I bought this summer.  I took the first 10 minutes or so of class to have everybody circle up and I explained how to fill and use the pens, showed them how to fill them up, and let them ink up their new pens.  They’ll be able to ink up whenever they need and I won’t have to do it for them.  🙂  Yay!  I also gave them a sample bottle of ink to take home so they could try other colors.  I have a good gallon and a half of blue and black to give out, but not a lot of other colors.

So how’s the raffle ticket sale going?  The one where I’m selling raffle tickets for a chance to cut and color my hair?  Yeah, that one…
Are the kids interested in buying tickets for the chance to cut and color my hair HOWEVER they want?  Short answer yes.  Long answer — I need to make posters and hang them up around campus to remind the kids I’m doing this!  🙂  A couple students bought tickets, but that’s been it.  Two very nice people have bought tickets for me to give out – $50 and $20 worth.  Very cool!  So if a student buys one they get another for free, and I’ll also get names from teachers to randomly give out to students until I run out of extra tickets.  😀
If I get enough money I’m thinking about buying a new button maker.  (Something like this.)  My old one broke a couple years back.

Wish me luck.  😉

Making the repair

A little while back I made this Mardi Gras Mayhem pen and about five minutes after finishing it the cap wouldn’t stay on.  It would thread on – sort of – but you could slip it right off.

So why did this happen?  Well, I – in all of my wisdom and brilliance – made the end of the section about a 1/2 millimeter too thick.  Instead of 13.8ish mm in diameter, like the back of the section was (against the barrel) it was closer to 14.3ish mm in diameter.  So instead of making a quick measurement and turning it down a bit, I thought what a great idea it would be to make the hole in the cap bigger so the section could fit in there.  Why?  Well, you know, the cap has to fit the section – not the pen!  🙂

Today I got around to making another cap for it – clipless (those things aren’t free ya know) and saw why the old cap didn’t quite work out.  So I turned the section down and made the new cap for it.  Now it’s ready to give away to a student.  🙂