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It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, so I wanted to catch you up on what’s actually happening at Modern Fuel — the good, the slow, and the expensive-sounding noises.
Life is full right now. Six kids, summer activities, a full-time job for about another year and a half, and Modern Fuel in every hour I can find around all of that. Small businesses are hard. I love every minute of it — I just never get enough minutes. So thank you, genuinely, for the support. It’s what keeps this thing moving.
There are just four of us. One is Luke, our engineering intern, who’s been on a tear — reorganizing the tool drawers, designing laser engraving fixtures for corporate logos, and experimenting with “shipwrecked” patina finishes on copper. That’s his handiwork below.
I really like our current pocketable fountain pen, but as part of the next run I’m making a few small changes. The big one: softening the threads on the regular (short) body. You barely touch them in normal use, but they’ve always bugged me, and “it’s always bugged me” is not a phrase I want attached to anything we make. I’m trying to figure out if I want to change the threads altogether (an acme or trapezoidal thread) or try to knock down the “highs” of our current metric thread. I’m leaning toward the latter so that new parts stay backwards-compatible, but I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to do it well.
A couple of metals are currently out of stock. Current inventory on what remains will last a bit longer — but after that, we’re onto this new batch.
New materials are planned too: zirconium, limited numbers of mokume, and titanium damascus (laminated titanium, cool patterns and colors, but VERY expensive). I’m also debating a small run of Ultem, and a demonstrator fountain pen would be fun to build (either Ultem or polycarbonate, maybe?). Would you want either? Reply and tell me — I’m genuinely deciding based on interest.
One caveat: the way Swiss machining works, new parts take setup time. Expect several weeks to a few months before any of these are real, because I basically have to run all of the parts in all materials before getting a finished pen.
I’m hoping to release a batch of full zirconium clipped aBAPs in the next couple of weeks. These take a lot of polishing before flame anodizing to that dark gray/black, so I won’t promise a date — but if you want a text the moment they go live, sign up for an SMS alert here.
For 6+ months I’ve been working on something big — an entirely new product line for us. The machining has pushed me to learn more than I expected, and it has cost me more endmills and related tooling / fixturing than I’d like to admit (I don’t even want to total up the costs!! It’s much more than a new car’s worth)
I love the challenge. But it is, in fact, a challenge. More on this when it’s closer.