You are quite right to question the integrity of the plating Rod, especially on a more expensive kit. With my own pen makers hat on, I can see little point in paying the extra for a nicely made kit if at the end of the day the end user is going to get a turned pen that is no better than a cheaper kit.
However, I am quite happy to stake my reputation on the fact that the Mistral plating is at least the equal of Daycom's. It's for you to judge whether its better. It is titanium gold, which you may already understand about, but for the benefit of others reading this thread who may not know about that type of plating, I will explain.
The Mistral undergoes a two part process - Firstly the components have a colour matched titanium nitride molecularly bonded to them by a process known as Particle Vapor Deposition or PVD. The TiNi then has gold bonded to it, again by PVD. The gold fills in the troughs and peaks left behind by the TiNi, those troughs and peaks serving to prevent the gold from wearing.
The second part of the process is to plate the components with gold, over the top of what already exists. The result is a finish that is incredibly hard and as equally resilient to wear as rhodium, and which should show virtually no wear throughout its lifetime - in other words it's more or less bomb proof.
The whole raison d'etre of Beaufort Ink is to increase the choices available to pen makers in the UK, and to do so in a way that introduces products that are either unique or hard to find, but in any case, always the highest quality. I would not dream of trying to knowingly sell anything at all that is of poor quality and have gone out of my way to make sure that the Mistral is as fine as possible, and that includes that plating.
I hope that answers your query.
