• pen making

All is quiet at the moment. I have one pen in the works and I am just waiting to hear back from the client on the final design options. Other than that I haven’t really done much other than finish sanding and polishing the three pens in the main picture. The blue one with the wedge shaped ends came up really well after the polish it is like looking in a mirror when you look at the flat parts but the photo doesn’t do it justice. I am starting to get the hang of that design, it’s quite easy you just need to be careful about how far you cut of the angle. I have cut straight through the hole I drilled for the converter before now. There is a saying about measuring twice and cutting once which I seem to ignore for the most part, much to my detriment.

So yeah the material of that wedge design I hadn’t used before. The tolerances on the threads are a bit different than usual but I don’t know whether that is because my digital callipers aren’t exactly the greatest of things, or whether the taps and dies are not held straight. That should change in the new year as I know santa is bringing me a die holder for the lathe.

So what do I plan for the future? Well I have set myself some goals. I want to get my pens reviewed by someone online and I have talked to one person about it but I need to nail some aspects of where I want this to go before that is feasible. I want to go to my first show as a trader and for that I need some money to put down for a table and some nibs as well as making the pens themselves. The other thing I want to do is something I am quite excited about. I want to learn how to make my own blanks out of Alumilite, again this will be expensive but I am hoping to get there.

So realistically I think this will be the last update before Christmas as I am doing family things pretty much all of next weekend and up to Christmas itself so I doubt I will have much pen making time. Any comments I welcome them. Take care, have a good Christmas and new year and let the nice ink flow.