The Emperors new case

Anna Young
Jan 18, 2017
3 min read

I enjoy making pen cases and especially if they are for special pens ( which most of them are). As the title suggests this case is for a Namiki Emperor or maybe two.

I have made a similar case before although slightly smaller.

After cutting the pieces of kydex to the desired size I used a scrap piece of leather and a heat gun to roll the kydex into tubes.

After rolling I used the heat gun and the dowel to round over one end matching the other end to a line marked on the dowel. I need to finish the rounded end before moving on to the next step.

Once I was happy with the tubes I cut some red suede into strips and stitched one end with a running stitch. I left the end long as this acts as a cushion when the pen is placed into the case. I then wrapped this suede around a smaller dowel than the one used for forming the tube.

In my single pen cases I wrap all of the outer tube in suede right to the bottom however this case is going to have a leather wrap before the outer cover so the extra suede would actually get in the way.

For this case the overlap is only 25 mm which I will be thinning down to allow the leather that will fasten the two tubes together.

I have cut two pieces of 0.5 mm leather that I will use to fix the tubes together

I use a fine thread to put a row of stitches down the centre it will never be seen but I will know it is there so it has to be right.

After stitching I dyed it black. The next step was to glue the pen tubes to the leather

Rather than adding glue to all parts I applied the contact cement to the centre of the leather and the area of the tube I wanted to stick it to. Once I had everything centred I applied the rest of the glue.

Pen tubes wrapped in thin leather ready for stitching.

I cut a strip of 2mm shoulder for the front and back panels.

I soaked the leather in water and gently formed the leather over the inner section which I have wrapped in packing film.

After repeating the previous with the back panel I used pieces of wood to hold the wet leather around the inner section. Using clamps I applied pressure.

I am going to let this dry overnight

After drying overnight I removed one set of clamps at a time then drilled holes to assist with lining up the pieces

After removing the inner section I made two further holes to allow a thread to be positioned as a marker to give a centre line for cutting.

After cutting I made the thin strip to fit around the centre this took some time to get the width right after that I started to mark the stitching holes and the stitch the bottom section.

As ever projects have set backs the centre band is the culprit on this one having got the width right I started to thin down the overlapping edges. Unfortunately one of them ended up shorter than required so I started again.

Got there eventually the overlapping join starts centre bottom and ends just after the bend bottom right.

Almost ready for dye the final job will be to stitch the centre band in place.

I have started the dying process I have applied six coats of black dye so far and will continue to apply dye until the leather will not take any more.

Time to make the toggle I wanted this one to be large as the case is for large pens this oak is 10 mm thick.

I cut a rectangle from this piece and using an 18 mm dowel for one side and a 20 mm for the other to make two different size pen rests.

Having spent the night in my ebonising solution it now looks like this.

I have sanded the ebonised oak pen rest and popped it back into the solution for a few hours.

Here are the components except the toggle almost ready for assembly once it has fully dried.

This is the finished toggle / pen rest ready for the final assembly

Time to attach the centre band stitched in place with Lin cable thread this is a very high quality thread.

Once the centre band was stitched in place I laid out all of the components ready for final assembly. I also added a Montblanc 149 to the picture for a size comparison.