JEB’s GvFC Ancient Egypt Pen

Background…

If you didn’t read the main page about my GvFC pens, here’s a short recap…

As a custom pen maker, I’m called on to make a variety of pen styles, so I have to be on the ready. One way I try to hone my pen making skills is to challenge myself with a uniquely styled pen. I like to find a pen with a unique style, then try to replicate it.

This summer I ended up making THREE pens, all from acompanycalled Graf von Faber-Castell (GvFC). The pens are from a collection they call their Pen of the Year series. The first pen was the Aztec. This pen, called The Ancient Egypt was the second pen in this years skills challenge.

Why I chose the Egypt pen

Although I’ve had my laser engraver for going on two years now, I’m still learning and experimenting. I’m trying various techniques and methods, so like my general pen making skills, I’m ready for whatever request may come along. I chose the Ancient Egypt pen for the meticulous hieroglyphic engravings on the barrel. I thought they would offer a good test for the laser to see how small and intricate of an image it could engrave.

Creating the hieroglyphics

The first step in every engraving job is to create the pattern. And if possible with this pen, I wanted to create the symbols exactly as they were on the original pen. So even before I started making any of the pen parts, I began working on the engraving images. GvFC explains in their details about the pen that the hieroglyphics spells out the name of 12 Ancient Egyptian gods. So it was important to be accurate with the symbols and their placement. Luckily I found enough images of the barrel that I was able to interpret all the symbols around the full circumference. Recreating the images was tedious, but I found that the names repeated, so it was just a matter of creating the initial twelve names, then placing them in the correct order around the barrel.

Making the pen

There were a few challenges with the parts on the Ancient Egypt Pen. The barrel was pretty basic, but the cap and section had some challenging features. I knew at the beginning I wanted to make the gold and blue stripped section. It’s a great little surprise that greets the owner as he uncaps the pen. So I decided to make that first. And I was fortunate to have the some acrylics that would pass for the same colors. My blue is a crushed blue, but I don’t think it takes away from the effect. GvFC usually uses clear material for an ink-view window in their POY Sections, but I didn’t see any images that showed one on this pen.

Clip decision

One decision I had to make for all three of the GvFC pens was to make them clipless. The GvFC pens all use the same surface-mount style clip. But since I didn’t have access to such a clip, the surface mount style made it a little easier to go with a clipless pen and not have it affect the overall look of the pen quite as much.

If you’re a frequent visitor to my site and read the stores with the various pens, you’ll know that I constantly comment (a more accurate word would be complain) about the lack of availability when it comes to pen clips. Ever since I began making custom pens (now almost 14 years), pen clips were always very hard to find. There was a time in the early 2000’s when that began to open up a little, with a few suppliers offering a few clip styles, but then suddenly the door closed again. I purchased what I could at the time, but even then, most of the clips rings were small. So to use them I have to make custom modifications to either the pen or the clip ring.

Engraving

When I have a pen to engrave, I always run several tests before I engrave the pen. Different materials require slightly different laser settings. Even new batches of black acrylic can engrave differently. So before I commit the engraving to the pen, I run tests on leftover pieces of the material. Another reason for testing is because you can create different looks by adjusting certain settings. With the hieroglyphics, because they were so small I only wanted a surface etching. If you look closely at the engravings in the original pen, the images appear to be ‘cut out’ or pierced, with a lighter material behind it. But those must have just been the lighting, because other images show it as a normal engraving.

When it came to engraving the cap, I had to make some modifications to the lasers rotary. The rotary head can be swiveled to adjust the angle of the part, but only in one direction. It tips UP, but not down. And the Egypt’s cap had to be angled down. So I had to make a wedge to place under then rotary to raise the head-end. But when I did that, I couldn’t raise the laser high enough. So then I had to make riser blocks to temporarily raise the laser. Then the steep angle of the rotary created an issue with the laser head movement. It couldn’t move far enough to one side without hitting the cap, so I had to remove the lasers safety shield temporarily in order to engrave the finial without it catching.

Addressing the rest…

The next challenge to overcome was engraving the full length of the cap. The cap and finial lines are aligned with a break at the ‘rings’. So even though there were two separate engravings, the lines maintained alignment. So I had to be able to engrave the angled finial, then remove the wedge under the rotary without moving the position of the rotary. Then run the rest of the cap lines. So to do that, I had to build supports around the rotary that allowed me to lift the rotary for the wedge without changing the position, so I could remove the wedge and drop it back down flat again to engrave the lower lines without loosing alignment. Fortunately I have the laser mounted on an old cutting board to make it easy to move around. So I was able to easily screw down temporarily supports on the sided and end. Now all I had to do was remove the wedge and drop the rotary, then adjust laser height.

Buttons – last but not least

The last step in the engraving was to create the buttons or emblems. The buttons on the Egypt pen were the most challenging of all three pens due to their color. The cap button is blue, the blind-cap button is gold. A (blue) diode laser can’t engrave on blue because they’re the same color (the blue material absorbs the lasers blue light). And a diode laser has trouble with gold because it’s a reflective material. So I had to make a decision with the buttons.

I thought the scarab on the blue button was really cool, so before settling with a different color, I wanted to see if I could engrave on some blue acrylic. I had an assortment pack of thin sheet acrylic that had two shades of blue in it. So I decided to try them. Theirs a trick you can play with some material so the laser thinks it’s a different color by applying a thin laser of black acrylic craft paint on the surface. It’s used on clear acrylic to keep the laser from going straight through it. I used the paint to run tests on lighter colored acrylics, and it worked, so I thought I’d try it on the blue. I was surprised to get a good result on the first test. It didn’t engrave very deep, more like a surface etch. But the shinny surface against the engraved field was enough to let you make out the image clearly.

The gold was next. There is a company that makes special metallic acrylics suitable for laser engraving. They use a black base with a thin layer of the metallic color on top. But the button was only about 10mm in diameter, and to buy a single sheet, the shipping was more than twice the cost of the acrylic. So I wanted to find another option before I went that route.

Will you take credit?

One thing I found when I started making pens is that you can use a variety of seemingly unrelated things to make pens. One such thing is a credit card. So you can use a thin credit card to make colored spacers, such as a color band at the base of a cap finial or blind-cap. So I have an envelope full of old credit cards, and remembered that a few of them were gold cards. So I pulled a few out and ran some tests. One of them worked great. But instead of engraving into the surface, the image bubbled creating a cool raised reverse relief.

Summary

I was very pleased with all the features on this pen. The Section looks very close to the original, and the engraving is very detailed. Even the buttons look great. Just a shame I can’t get a clip like GvFC used. I thought about trying to make them (maybe that will be my next skills challenge!).

Pen #3: For the third pen in my skills series, I made the GvFC Knight’s pen. You can view that pen and the story here.