Ok you get bonus points if you can get which song the titles lyrics are from. So my isolation ended just in time for my work to decide to shut down so there will be no work for me for the foreseeable future. I can get into the workshop and make some pens while trying to forget about financial worries.

• Pen Making

As I just said I have managed to get into the workshop and I have been experimenting making a pen design that I came up with before I got the dremel. I have to say there was a part of it that was harder and there was a part of it which was much, much easier. I will start by explaining the former.

This design features a double cut off at the end of the barrel so there is a slope going in towards the middle on two sides of the pen. I do this by mounting it my swivel vice and drawing on the blank what I want to cut. The straight line notates where the end of the hole drilled for the converter is. I did the cut however it seemed I wasn’t holding the dremel straight, I need to figure out a way of doing that. I tidied it up a bit and made it look a bit better alas it still needed a bit of work, I was hoping it wasn’t a lost cause so I tidied it a bit more. Looking back at the off cut I realised why it was uneven rather than cut to a point one side of the cut seemed to snap off, this was probably due to excessive heat during the cutting process.

The rest of the pen went swimmingly. The section came out well, I am improving on these with each one I do. The lid though, this design calls for a square end of the cap. With the dremel witted with a barrel shaped sanding wheel it makes it so easy. Back in the swivel vice and draw a square on the end then sand down to the lines. Obviously when this pen is sanded and polished the sharp edges will smooth out.

*Other stuff

I have redone my website again and I have some areas that are new. I have put up all the pens that didn’t sell at the pen show using the best photo area I could and I didn’t take the photos in the bathroom like usual. I attempted to get some decent lighting too. I will be making my own blanks soon, I have priced up everything that needs to be bought to do this and I am going to see if I can get them delivered while work is locked down.

Now I don’t know if any of you remember but for my anniversary I commissioned some art from u/napsforlife well while I was tidying and sorting out my flat I found a frame. My wife and I checked the size and it fit! So we mounted it up on the wall in the hallway. It is my wife and I’s wedding vows written into a heart. It means so much to both myself and u/poisoned_strumpet . It was a pleasure working with napsforlife and I cannot recommend her more.

Other than that, as some of you know I am a bit of a gamer. I have been thinking up a game to run over a service called Roll20, which is an online virtual tabletop. The game I am running is Shadowrun (a game where the players play the parts of mercenaries in a corrupt cyberpunk and magic setting) and I have just finished writing up the pre generated characters, of course I used fountain pens. So here they are:

• Blight An elven street samurai who sees himself as a blight on all the mega corporations. (noodler nib creaper and Diamine Blue Flame)
• Shaggy A dog shaman who affectionately called his spirit animal ‘Scoobs’. (Nemosine pen and KWZ Thief’s red)
• Bullet A dwarven physical monk type who was forced out of his home by a megacorporation and is made to live on the streets bringing up his daughter and working as a shadowrunner to pay for his daughters education. (London Pen Co pen and Robert Oster Lake of Fire)
• Bird A Human ‘face’ character, the type that does all the speaking, named bird because of uk slang. (Den’s Pens Skull pen and Pure Pens Saltire)
• Max A Human driver who has a penchant for 20th century cinema. (Laban Flame and KWZ Old Gold)
• Insert A Troll Computer hacker who’s full street name is ‘insert name here’ Still lives at home with his parents and runs in the shadows to get away from it all. (Den’s Pens Gaea and KWS Cappucino)

Anyway thank you for letting me indulge in that bit of geekiness. I tried to keep everything loosly based on the topic of fountain pens.

Anyway that is it for this week, take care everyone and have a good weekend.

Anyways as usual you can follow me on instagram [@denscustompens](https://www.instagram.com/denscustompens/7 )

and if you want to find the archive of these posts I host them on my website here