Making a Filler Box

Guide

By Edgar – On March 16th, 2017

A space-saving and as well cost-effective alternative to expensive cases are self-made fountain pen boxes made from paper. In my case I replicated a SWAN filler box, which probably dates from the late 1940s, of the no more existent¹ fountain pen manufacturer Mabie Todd:

In addition to printable templates for the pen box, I also made a kind of foliation and printed it on lightweight paper with 68 g/m² (Tomoe River²), so it can be easily attached to the lid of the box later.

Printing the design directly on the lid won’t work, because the edges of the box would break up when folding the thick paper, though we want them to be well rounded but not sharp. Due the folding also the color application would come off if the template was printed using a laser printer.

Original and Remastering

What do you need?

• A way to print
• Thick paper (e.g., Clairefontaine Blanc with 250 g/m²)
• A ruler to make folding of the long sides easier
• Scissors and a small sharp knife to cut out the elliptic recesses (e.g. scalpel)
• Water-free adhesive (e.g. UHU All Purpose Adhesive). Water-based adhesive causes the paper to swell, it would become curly.

► You need optionally:

• Colored paper (e.g. Clairefontaine Trophée with 210 g/m²), if you want to design the lid in a different color and don’t use a foliation
• A little cloth or the like to pad the fountain pen (e.g. a microfiber cloth)

The adhesive needs to dry completely. Otherwise adhesive residues or solvent vapors could come into contact with the fountain pen and attack it (at least superficially).

Templates

PDF format

Normal box
2 recesses (length 143 mm, width 24 mm)

PDF document (266.35 KiB)Slim box
1 recess (length 135 mm, width 17 mm)

PDF document (266.15 KiB)

Foliation

for reproducing the SWAN box

This foliation is suitable for the normal box and has to be printed in duplex mode (short edge).

PDF document (5.56 MiB)

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