Texatdurango
Member
A current thread about new postal rates and box sizes, especially the boxes getting shorter prompted me to post this.
For starters, it seems that the "typical" blank is ¾" sq by 5 ½" or longer and what was once called a jumbo blank (7/8" sq by 6" long) is becoming more and more common place and folks are using them for Cigar pens, Jr Gents, Barons and the like and turning away literally 1/3 of the blank!
While larger blanks are nice to look at and handle, they are a lot larger than they need to be for most kits. As an example, one of the larger kit pens I make is the Craft Supply "Emperor" and I use a standard ¾" sq blank that can be as short as 4 ½" and work just fine. Now granted, with a finished diameter of .670" there isn't much room for error but this is a lot larger than the average kit but the main point I want to focus on is the length.
In my opinion 5" is plenty long enough for any pen kit I can think of other than perhaps the teacher's pen and ¾" is more than adequate with a 5/8" blank working for most pens.
Even if you wanted to make two pens from a blank for a Sierra for an example, you could easily make two 2.2" blanks from a blank under 5".
So, does anyone have any compelling arguments as to why we need to stay with 5 ½" blanks especially if it means not being able to stuff a bunch in the new flat rate boxes coming out or is it time to downsize?
For starters, it seems that the "typical" blank is ¾" sq by 5 ½" or longer and what was once called a jumbo blank (7/8" sq by 6" long) is becoming more and more common place and folks are using them for Cigar pens, Jr Gents, Barons and the like and turning away literally 1/3 of the blank!
While larger blanks are nice to look at and handle, they are a lot larger than they need to be for most kits. As an example, one of the larger kit pens I make is the Craft Supply "Emperor" and I use a standard ¾" sq blank that can be as short as 4 ½" and work just fine. Now granted, with a finished diameter of .670" there isn't much room for error but this is a lot larger than the average kit but the main point I want to focus on is the length.
In my opinion 5" is plenty long enough for any pen kit I can think of other than perhaps the teacher's pen and ¾" is more than adequate with a 5/8" blank working for most pens.
Even if you wanted to make two pens from a blank for a Sierra for an example, you could easily make two 2.2" blanks from a blank under 5".
So, does anyone have any compelling arguments as to why we need to stay with 5 ½" blanks especially if it means not being able to stuff a bunch in the new flat rate boxes coming out or is it time to downsize?