Just so you know, the cover image is from my youngest daughters alphabet cards, they use a fountain pen bottle of ink for I. Thought I would share it and this seemed like the good choice. Now for the silly question: what colour and manufacturer of ink is it?
Anyway… Come to think of it I use the words ‘anyway’ and ‘so’ quite a lot I really need to think of a better way to start my paragraphs. My brain isn’t working right at the moment though so I will have to think about that for next weeks update, came down with a migraine on Wednesday and still have it. What shall I start with though? Today I want to cover the plans I have for my shed and how far that is going, my latest pen (my wife u/poisoned_strumpet says its the best yet), then finally I want to let you know about an auction (if you haven’t read about it before).
So, on with the show as they say. The workshop, that was first on the list. So the first plan of action is to get a new door. I figure that making the small room secure is the first port of call as I will need to lock it if I am going to keep tools in there. As I live down the end of a road there is not a lot of light around so I want to make sure it is secure as possible. Luckily I do security testing as my day job so sorting out the physical security and actually getting the door shouldn’t be a problem. There is a small window on the back wall that I may just cover over or put some bars across. Covering it over wouldn’t be a problem as it doesn’t give mush natural light due to bushes the other side (lots with big nasty thorns on) so if you want to try and get in that way well… fair play to you, I wouldn’t, the window is also tiny. I have some desk tops and I have an internal door which is laminated and I can make into more desk top or shelf space. I have access to thick pieces of straight timber so I can make worktop legs from that. I have my eye on some thick mdf board that I am going to mount up on the wall and possibly put a tad of insulation behind I have some thinner pieces I can put up too cover walls I won’t be using for tool hooks. Like always the plans are in my head not written down at all and all the measurements are by eye for this bit, well apart from the door. So that is how far that is.
Anyway, the pen, the one I finished this week. I didn’t do any pen turning on Thursday or Friday thanks to the damned migraine. That was annoying, I mean those two days are usually when I do the bulk of the work, I tried to do something simple like turning a square blank to a round but I managed to mess that up, one of the rounds was not round but I am hoping I can salvage something from the blank. The pen I did manage to finish I am so proud of and it is one of those ones where I don’t know whether I want to sell it or whether I want to keep it. Even unsanded and buffed it looks nice . I have tried something a little different with this one and it wasn’t without it’s pitfalls. I wanted to fit a clip to it, I am trying to do that with most of my pens now unless I have some sort of shape to the cap which would inhibit it, this was the bit I messed up on. The other thing I wanted to do was to have a concave curve on the barrel with a flattened curve on the barrel end (or the finial if you are being technical). I made the caps finial and threaded the pokey out bit to fit it to the end of the cap using the threads (I don’t like using glue if I can help it). I went to make the cap worked out it was exactly half the blank I was using drilled the holed and shattered the end of it because I didn’t drill in from the back side. I used the second half and went to screw the finial in and the threads didn’t engage! I threw my toys out of the pram and started to tidy up the lathe, when I was collecting up the strings of acrylic to put in the recycling bin I found the tiniest little bit of an off-cut I figured that I had nothing to lose so I redid the threads and that is what you can see keeping the clip on. Want to see the final result? I know I want to show you, so here it is .
So the final thing. A few weeks ago I made an ebonite pen for u/newtonpens to put up on his site in the charity auction. It is an orange and black ebonite barrel pen with a black ebonite cap, on the cap there is a flattened edge which acts as a roll stop when it is capped. The section is a bock section that takes bock#6 nibs. The auction is for charity and the money made goes to a scholarship fund for kids that can’t afford their further education. I am hoping that it gets a decent amount and if it gets to $100 Shawn will throw in a custom nib grind on the steel nib you choose. Links are below:
Info on the Scholarship program
Anyway, that is it for another week or so, hopefully two things will happen by next week.
1 I will get rid of this damned migraine.
2 My vocabulary that will improve so I don’t use so many so’s and anyways (did you count them?)
take care
Den's Pens 
