Monday, April 09, 2012

Further Adventures in Noligraphy

I really should have been doing other things, but when the postal carrier delivered my set of Schmidt ballpoint cartridges, I had to construct my new Noligraph right away. I should have documented my process, but my hands were busy with the doing. I can tell you that this "Newligraph" writes better than the Noligraph because the weight is better in the hand, and the length allows for better balance. It feels kind of like a carpenter's pencil.



Here's what I did. I cut two pieces of cardboard (Sean Malone, who is responsible for this particular adventure, suggests the kind of cardboard that is used for legal pads) 15mm wide and 15 mm long. Then I cut two more pieces 15mm wide and 80 mm long. I lined the cartridges up with a ruler, and, following Sean's suggestion, bound them together with scotch tape. I placed the taped cartridges on top of the bottom 140 mm piece of cardboard and placed the two shorter pieces of cardboard beneath the cartridges. Then I put the other 140 mm piece on the top. I bound them together gently with scotch tape, and then wrapped the whole bundle in masking tape. I made the top out of cardboard and masking tape as well.



Total cost? The cartridges cost $5. The rest of the material, being normal household stuff, is negligible. Total time? It took me about 30 minutes, including taking the photographs and writing this post.

3 comments:

Sean said...

Best. Name. EVER! :)

Sean said...

The only thing more gratifying than having a good idea, is when someone comes up with something better—you get to learn something, to boot. :)

elerouxx said...

Cool! I just made mine! (3 years later lol). I used black duct tape, and pieces of a cheap plastic document folder, also black, hard enough to replace the cardboard. The result was awesome too!