I notice you sell various sizes of taps and die sets. What dictates the size you would use. How do you decide which set to go for. Are there places you can get mandrels etc from or do you make you own.
I have pretty much made up my mind to have a go at a kitless pen. But I don't understand what all the taps and dies are for and why they are such odd sizes. I need to do a lot of research before I start shelling out money because it looks like it ain't going to be cheap to set up for. I work in engineering but I don't recognize these tap sizes.
The various specialist tap and die sizes are to allow you some choice, but they fall into two categories. First you need to decide what size nib you're going to use - size 5 or size 6. There's size 8 as well, but you can ignore them for now, as they tend to be used for oversized pens by makers with an established market - size 8 nibs are quite specialist. The other two though are standard sizes, and which one you decide will dictate which taps you need to make the thread inside your Section to locate the nib housing. Size 5 is 6.4x0.6 and size 6 is 7.9x0.6
After that, you need to sit down with a lot of paper, a pencil and a good eraser, and work out your design. You need to start from the inside, and work your way to the outside though, because the fundamental point about a fountain pen is that you need to be able to get a converter in and out of it, so there is a minimum size requirement for where the Section screws into the body. The converter you used the other day to upgrade a kit pen is the converter most people would use for a kitless pen too, and it's o/d at its widest point is a shade under 8mm, so the minor on your female thread needs to be a minimum of 8mm, meaning the major will be about 9mm or more, depending on the pitch you use. Beaufort Ink doesn't stock taps and dies for this particular thread because you can easily get them off the shelf from almost anywhere that sells taps and dies. Something like 9x0.75 or 10x0.75 would work well, or maybe even bigger, depending on how large you want your pen to be.
Before you commit to a thread size for the section/body connection though, you also need to consider the thread for screwing on the cap, and that's where the other category of specialist taps and dies come in. First, already having a rough idea of sizing for the above elements, you need to decide where your cap thread is going to sit. The material you're using will have a bearing here too, since you need to take into account the integrity of the finished article if for instance you cap thread sits directly above your section/body thread - in which case you may need to use a fatter cap thread than if the two are in different places. The specialist cap thread taps and dies on the Beaufort Ink website are all triple start threads, which means that the cap will screw on and off with three times fewer turns than a single start thread. Fountain pen owners want to be able to remove the cap in a couple of twists or less, they don't like having to spend ages removing or replacing it. They are available on the Beaufort Ink website from M10 to M14, but something like M12 or M13 will be suitable for most makers, for most designs.
I know. As clear as mud.
