Bit low on pictures this week and for that I apologise.

I have been having some pretty major issues this week. The drive belt on the lathe frayed to the point of being dangerous so we had to shut the lathe down until a new one was bought. It’s not my lathe so I had no control over how long it would take to repair. If it was up to me it would have been repaired the same day, unfortunately it is not mine and my boss does tend to take a long time to do things. You ask him to do something and you will be lucky if he gets around to it within two weeks to a month. So I was forced to take another break even though I have to finish off one pen and send it off then do another pen and I have a third which I am in talks with. Alas these are the problems of using someone elses lathe and I am truly grateful that I have access to it. It has set me thinking though, I need my own lathe.

This has caused a dilemma to emerge. I need to make pens to get money to buy a lathe and I need a lathe to make pens. So that leaves me with two choices, credit, borrow money from family or see if I can get a business grant from the government. I do plan to make some stock pens that are ready for selling though, so there is that.

Two good things have happened this week though. I got some new tooling with carbide inserts. They have been giving me much better results than the HSS tools I was using. Very glad I have got them and using some blanks I already have while I wait to get some cash for the blanks for the pens people are wanting to buy I have started a secret project. Does anyone know of a HSS lathe tool sharpening service as I want to keep mine on standby if my tips go.

The other good thing that happened this week which is the reason why this update is a day late. It was my daughters birthday yesterday and I got to give her the pink pen I made for her and she absolutely loved it. Now I just got to find an ink to go for it. She wants a blue ink of all things. I showed her

(https://www.troublemakerinks.com/products/simoun-50-ml) one and she loved it.

That is it for this week, have a good one. As always if you want to look over stuff I have done its on the link below.

[Den’s Pens](https://denspens643598967.wordpress.com)