In praise of the Artisan Aero Pen kit

I bought three of these to use with segmented blanks bought from Mark James, the other Mark. Unfortunately they are built around different tubes and they sat for a while in the shop. I purchased stock bushings and had my wife select blanks she liked with the kits. Today they reached the finish line and I'll certainly buy more. I like that the kit smoothly pressed together, not too tight but tight enough to eliminate the need to glue the components. I also liked the thickness of the pen body compared to a stock Sierra. With all that meat there is little chance to split the tube when pressing it together. Lastly, the kits are first rate and to me quite beautiful. The ease of cartridge replacement by simply unscrewing the nib is a plus for a customer.
I am SURE many of you have been using them for years, but today was my "aha" moment.

The first two are inlace acrylester and the last one is acrylic acetate. All turned easily and polished up quickly.

Nice looking set of pens! Are they thicker than the Sierra? And do they use the same tube size?

The aero is a 23/64th tube.

SteveJ said:

Nice looking set of pens! Are they thicker than the Sierra? And do they use the same tube size?

Click to expand...

The feel the same finished outside diameter, but the tube is much smaller and a different drill bit is needed.

TonyL said:

The aero is a 23/64th tube.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tony I'm at the Gallery manning the store for the last half of the day.

Outside dimension is 0.472 like Sierra pens.

The click versions are really nice, too. Not a Schmidt mechanism but better than anything else I've found.

The tube length is shorter than Sierra tubes too.

I use many cut-offs to make aeros (as Mark stated the tube is much shorter than the sierra). However, the wall is much thicker than a sierra and therefore more forgiving (in some cases) when it comes to painting tubes and barrels. I do wish it came in a more masculine style, but I have given it to guys and they liked it (at least they said they liked it...maybe they gave it to their wives LOL!).

Today I finished making Delrin TBC sanding bushings and Delrin copies of stock bushings to use when buffing. It takes time and Delrin is a chore to turn with it wrapping around the piece constantly, but worth the hour or so. Metal TBC are on order from Brian Nikitas.