Making a springy silver ballclip.

[Fountainbel]

Hi fountain pen friends !
As you surely already remarked in my postings I use a home made silver ball clip on most of my pens.
Silver clips are mostly "cast" using the “lost wax” procedure which allows complex shapes and patterns.
Drawback is however cast clips are rather soft , hence easily loose their pre-set pinching force.
Avoiding this problem I decided to make my clips starting from 1.5mm thick hard "cold rolled" silver sheet.
This material is gradually rolled from a thicker sheet to the desired 1.5mm thickness, making the surface extremely hard and springy.
On the attached pictures you can the the manual production steps in making the clip.
The 5mm ball is drilled with a 1.5mm bore and a 90° chamfer allowing it to be riveted on the clip tip.
I’ve opted for riveting since silver soldering would make the ball and clip tip soft, loosing its springiness.
As you surely understand manually making this clip is a lot of work, making each clip takes me at least 5 hours...
But I think its rewarding, this is a perfect clip….. at least in my opinion!
Please note that these clips are not for sale...
Best regards,
Francis

[Chrissy]

Excellent work fountainbel. Thanks for that insight.

[Robert]

Fascinating, detailed information, Francis - and very fine photos, too. Thanks for your efforts.