Engraving Pens ...

[Ron Smith ... Richmond, VA]

Here are a couple of examples that Keith engraved for me this afternoon. The quality is remarkable! The antler pen burned nice dark lines, while the corian pen needs to have ink or paint added to darken the lines. You can use any color you want the lettering to be. The lettering and the graphics on the wood items is clean and precise.

[Ken Nelsen]

Ron,
Those are nice. I've found that the antler engraves extremely well. I've done a few and recently included an elk head silhouette which seemed to work out quite well. I've had a few requests for those. Also like the Corian.
Keith, have you done any fills on Corian with the Corian adhesive in a contrasting color? Works extremely well.
Later,
Ken

[Randy Gleckler]

Ron...

Those are some great looking pens. I was curious if you make that tray that the pen is sitting in.. If so may I ask how. I've been trying to make some like that and not really happy with my results. Thanks


Randy

[Ron Smith ... Richmond, VA]

Ron...

Those are some great looking pens. I was curious if you make that tray that the pen is sitting in.. If so may I ask how. I've been trying to make some like that and not really happy with my results. Thanks


Randy

Sorry ... I got the tray from Keith. I haven't mastered a router enough to do something like this.

Thanks,
Ron

[Keith Outten]

Ken,

I normally use paint to fill Corian, engrave it while it is covered with a special tape, then spray paint and remove the tape.

[Keith Outten]

Randy,

I purchase the pen trays from an engraving distributor. The truth is that they are cheaper to buy than to make in my workshop.

[Randy Gleckler]

Thanks guys,

I guess I'll just keep practicing. One day I'll get it Right. :)


Randy

[Keith Outten]

Ken,

Don't know why but your post about using color contrasting Corian adhesive for fill material went by me on the first read. Thanks for the tip Ken, I will be giving this a try soon. I did catch the elk graphic, nice touch :)

Ken, do you own an engraver?

[Bill Grumbine]

Good morning all

I'm coming in a bit late on the discussion, but I thought I would add from my experience. Back in the old days we had hundreds, maybe thousands of pens engraved. I sent them out, since a good engraver back then was about $80,000. We did a number of contrasting fill engravings, and the way our engraver did it was to put a piece of masking tape over the part to be engraved, and then spray or brush in the contrasting color. Pull the tape off when dry and it's done!

As far as the boxes go, it depends on what you make as to how much you can charge for them. I used to get $50.00 each for this box, and more if it had a pen in it (which it usually did). I had the operation jigged and set up to the point where I did not remember any of the measurements anymore, and could crank them out at a rate of two to three an hour.

<img src= "http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/penbox1.jpg">

We engraved the pens, and we engraved the boxes on the top, sometimes on the bottom, and often on that blank spot on the inside of the lid above the cards.

Bill

[Ken Nelsen]

Keith,
I own an Epilog Legend 24EX 40Watt engraver. I've had it a little over a year now.
Ken