I am posting this thread as a reference for those interested in making Zanerian style flanges for their oblique pen. It's not a difficult task with a few tools such as clamps, drill bits, metal shears, a couple homemade wooden forms and a spare nib. The 2 wooden forms are simple to make and very useful to bend a thin piece of brass into a flange. One wooden form is a small piece of hardwood with 2 slots cut slightly larger in size than the 1/4" and 7/32" drill bits in this photo. The other wooden form is the yellow piece of wood with the thin slot in the center.
The first step is to cut a strip of thin brass. This can be any width you desire in a 3-3.5" in length.
Next step, fold the brass strip in half.
Clamp the bent strip of brass over the larger slot opening on the wooden form.
Place the top end of a .25" drill bit over the brass and push down on the brass to create the first bent of the flange.
The flange starts taking shape after pressing into the wooden form.
My apology for this blurry photo. Your nib of choice will be placed into the brass strip.
The brass strip and nib are positioned over the smaller slot of the wooden form. A clamp holds the brass in place while a 7/32" brill bit is placed on top.
A small piece of wood is placed on top.
A hand clamp is used to press the brass strip into the slot. The purpose is to bend the brass directly into the nib.
When the clamp and drill bit are removed the strip of brass will look like this piece in the photo.
The brass strip and nib are placed in the thin slot of the yellow wooden form. This wooden device allows the brass shape to be fine tuned, adjusted and straightened.
A clamp is used to secure the bottom portion of the flange while fine tuning the nib alignment.
The brass strip with nib is placed on a piece of letter size paper with a couple of drawn parallel lines. The parallel lines are reference to the to drilled opening in to the center of the pen body. A metal ruler is placed on to of the brass strip. An X-acto blade lightly marks the angle for the next step in this process.
The brass strip with nib is placed into the yellow wooden form and tilted to line up with the X-acto blade mark on the brass. The mark on the brass should be positioned 1/8" above the top of the wooden form. Moving the mark above the wooden form ensures the nib will not be too far away from the pen body when the flange is installed.
With clamp pressure applied to the yellow form the excess brass is bent at an angle and trimmed with shears to provide a small bend at the bottom edge of the flange. This bend in the edge allows the flange to fit snug into the center hole of the pen body. A wooden or brass pin is installed into the center hole of the pen body to provide a secure fit with no movement of the flange while lettering, installing or removing nibs.
