# Silver, acrylic, and titanium hummingbird



## btboone (Feb 8, 2010)

Here's a pen that I completed almost a year ago. The clip, centerband, upper and lower overlays are cast in silver. The body is titanium that has been anodized for the bright colors. The nib is a custom gold one. The tricky part was to have all the various parts (clip, nib, centerband text, and overlays) to line up when the pen is closed.  Also tricky was the 3D artwork that had to fit onto a bulging conical shape.  Lots of learning curve involved in this one.


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## Vol1 (Feb 8, 2010)

Amazing! You do great work!


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## JBCustomPens (Feb 8, 2010)

Absolutely stunning!


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## maxman400 (Feb 8, 2010)

WOW! Great looking Pen! Fantastic craftsmanship.


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## Constant Laubscher (Feb 8, 2010)

I saw the pen at Woodcraft in the display box it is awesome!


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## Ligget (Feb 8, 2010)

Bruce that is AWESOME!!!


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## Jim15 (Feb 8, 2010)

Absolutely beautiful Bruce.


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## toolcrazy (Feb 8, 2010)

Gorgeous, nice work.


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## jttheclockman (Feb 8, 2010)

:good::good::good::good::good: That desrves a 5 thumbs up. Great job as always. Way beyond my talents.


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## altaciii (Feb 8, 2010)

That, my friend, is a beautiful work of art. Great work!


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## johncrane (Feb 8, 2010)

That's a WOW! Bruce!


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## khogan16 (Feb 8, 2010)

very nice indeed.


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## theHullTurn (Feb 8, 2010)

Wow that is insanely awesome!!!


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## workinforwood (Feb 9, 2010)

That is one crazy spectacular pen Bruce!  Thank you so much for sharing.


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## cnirenberg (Feb 9, 2010)

Bruce,
Wow.  Fantastic looking pen.


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## rherrell (Feb 9, 2010)

UNBELIEVABLE!


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## Mrs Rojo22 (Feb 9, 2010)

WOW! Beautiful!

Robin


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## jbostian (Feb 9, 2010)

That is an amazing pen!

Jamie


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## BRobbins629 (Feb 9, 2010)

It looks even better in person. Saw it at the DC Pen show.  Its a beauty.


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## btboone (Feb 9, 2010)

Thanks guys.  I learned a lot making that one.


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## creativewriting (Feb 9, 2010)

Tremendous display of skill and craftsmanship!


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## btboone (Feb 18, 2010)

I heard this was in the new Pen World or possibly Stylus magazine, but I haven't seen it as of yet.


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## Karin Voorhis (Feb 18, 2010)

That is super cool and great... nice idea and nice way to pull it all off together.


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## PenMan1 (Feb 18, 2010)

Very nice Bruce. My favorite of your work to date. Beautiful.


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## skiprat (Feb 19, 2010)

Just superb!!!:biggrin::good:
Very well done Bruce!!


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## Gary Max (Feb 19, 2010)

Bruce if I live long enough I am going to own one of your pens.
Margie already has one of your rings-----My turn next !!!!!!!


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## CaptG (Feb 19, 2010)

Spectacular work Bruce.  Thank you for sharing.


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## Rojo22 (Feb 23, 2010)

This pen in person is an absolutely brilliant piece of work and design!


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## Freethinker (Feb 23, 2010)

Okay.

I thought I'd seen the crème de la crème of pens, but this one tops anything I've seen on IAP.

A masterpiece. That's all you can say.


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## PJT (Feb 23, 2010)

just one word WOW!
Pete


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## Jgrden (Feb 23, 2010)

Teach me how to do that. It is a wonderful looking pen.


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## btboone (Feb 24, 2010)

It was tons of work and took months to dial in. It was to be made in batches of hundreds at a time, but the deal fell through. I also invested in a lot of new equipment like a faster computer, 3D scanner, digitizing pad, software, heat treating oven, and other stuff. I also looked into silver casting equipment but decided not to buy that stuff. Getting the computer artwork to true 3D on a curved tapering surface was very hard. I remember working 24 hours straight on that part once. There was lots of steep learning curve involved for me there. The wax parts then had to be printed by a high resolution wax printer. That was no small feat in itself because the parts are so thin and delicate. That took several attempts and a few redesigns to get that to work OK. Some silicone molds were made from the master models, and we had to take shrinkage of the mold and the silver into account. Normal injection wax for the lost wax parts didn't work well because of the thin members, so a special type of liquid wax that hardens under ultraviolet light was used. The parts were cast in sterling silver. They were then hand finished which again was tough due to their thin lines. The main titanium parts were then reengineered to fit the as-cast parts rather than the original numbers. Since the nib had to line up with the body, I had to screw it in and mark where the artwork was to align to. The same had to apply to the cap. I had to screw on the cap then align and affix the clip. Since this had to be able to align, I had to come up with a way to do that since simple threads would not allow that orientation. I made a special fixture that flared out a cylindrical tip of the cap/clip in order to secure it in a hole in the acrylic cap. I made some special pitch 2 lead threads that screwed the cap to the section. This allowed the cap to line up with the bird when it was screwed on one complete revolution. I made left hand threads on the bottom acrylic end of the pen so that it would not unscrew when the upper cap is unscrewed. I didn't have a tap for the feed to screw into the section, so I made one. It was a pretty long one so that the whole section could be machined from the front without having to reposition it. The silver centerband with the latin name of the bird was oriented to the cap and nib and artwork, so had to go on only after orientation was established. The central titanium spine of the pen was anodized to get color in the belly of the bird as well as the flower. I had to hand cut a stencil to be able to anodize the different parts at different voltages to get the different colors. Again, all the artwork had to be vertically and rotationally aligned for when the pen was assembled. The gold nib had a logo lasered on. The surface finish of the acrylic had to be very glossy and alignment of the various parts was pretty important.

Other than all that, it was pretty simple.


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## PenMan1 (Feb 24, 2010)

Sounds like something I would do. Spend so much time and money developing a wonderful idea or project (and this IS a wonderful project) then realizing that if you sold it for $2,000 you would ONLY loose about $3,000. Must be a GEORGIA thing

This is a wonderful pen, and IMHO (I saw it live at woodcraft) is worth ALL the effort and sacrifices! Grayson Tighe and David Broadwell should both be scowling about now. Your design is "out there" and I believe it deserves sincere recognition!


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## btboone (Feb 24, 2010)

It was definitely not high on the profitability meter.  I figure I had in the 5 digits sunk into the project.  I have a batch of ten made, but it would not come close to breaking even with all the time and effort spent.  I had the design for a second of the series completed before stopping on that.  Live and learn.


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## Freethinker (Feb 24, 2010)

btboone said:


> It was tons of work and took months to dial in. It was to be made in batches of hundreds at a time, but the deal fell through. I also invested in a lot of new equipment like a faster computer, 3D scanner, digitizing pad, software, heat treating oven, and other stuff.  <snip> The surface finish of the acrylic had to be very glossy and alignment of the various parts was pretty important.



Wow.

Fantastic story of all that you went through to create this pen.

Thanks for sharing it with us. Very interesting read.


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## Jgrden (Feb 24, 2010)

Well, I asked for it, and I got it. You taught me that your work is way over my Head and equipment. You are a Master Craftsman. Thank you for sharing.


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