* Pen making

This will probably be a bit of a short update today, the reasons will follow so those of you that don’t want to read that kind of stuff are not hit by it straight away. I am trying to sound at least a bit professional these days, well apparently I am, let’s see how that goes shall we?

Well I got an order for a rather unique pen. Well it’s unique for me, it has probably been done before a million and one times before. It is going to prove a bit of a challenge for me as if is 1, a demonstrator and 2 has foreign objects embedded into the resin. What is the foreign object embedded in the resin? Gold! Yup, yup, yup. A client wanted me to put gold leaf into a resin and make a pen out of it for them. I have made 2 blanks out of it just in case. I think they turned out really well, [here](https://i.imgur.com/gH6W5Ud.jpg) they are.

What else? Oh yeah, pens. I made some pens, as you can probably guess by the whole theme of these updates and the pictures I have shown. So what I am going to do is show you through some of the process of making the pens.

I start off by making the sections, the whole design hinges on how long the section is, how far the nib extends and how far the converter extends out the back defines how long the barrel will be and how long the cap will be. [Here](https://i.imgur.com/xgd2rEz.jpg) they are all lined up half way through sorting out sizes of things.

The next stage is stilling out and threading the barrels, the external threads are done first then I drill them out and finally the internal thread for the [sections](https://i.imgur.com/1GwktK9.jpg). I thread them a few times to make sure that the threads themselves are well formed and clear of any detritus then screw the sections on, I then mark on the barrel where the ends of the drilling is so that I can start to shape.

[Here](https://i.imgur.com/HxqMmar.jpg) are the final shapes of the barrels. Most of my shaping is done the same way, I use files, sand paper and the lathe itself to do my shaping. This ensures that I don’t suffer any breakages while shaping. It’s all done quite carefully and is probably the most time consuming part apart from the sanding and polishing.

Let’s take the Neptune for example, this design sports a concave curve from end to end. Because of this the caps do not post. So how do I get this concave curve? Well I start off on the lathe and mount it so the back end is in the chuck and the threaded end is against the live centre. I then turn steps from the end in the chuck to the threaded end which results in something like [this](https://i.imgur.com/j5jmAAo.jpg). I flip this around in the [lathe](https://i.imgur.com/OzkiNz3.jpg) and get a file out starting with a coarse bastard lathe. I round off the end and smooth off the steps then change to a fine file ending with a coarse 150grit sand paper. After that is all done I end up with something like [this](https://i.imgur.com/1Iah2as.jpg) which is ready for the final sand and polish.

Once that is all done the caps are done in a similar way to doing the barrel. I hope that enlightens some of you into my processes on creating pens. Not the most sophisticated way of doing things but I find it works.

So here is what you end up with after the polishing:

* [Aequitas](https://i.imgur.com/T7lkJoB.jpg)

* [Aphrodite](https://i.imgur.com/2Ykw7R2.jpg)

* [Baldur](https://i.imgur.com/Ugs12Zi.jpg)

* Other stuff

The struggle continues. I got an upgrade to my computer, ended up losing a lot of stuff as something went wrong with windows. Then the backup drive failed and I ended up losing over a decade of data, books I was writing, family photos, gaming stuff, work stuff, all gone. I have broken parts to pens I have been making by mistake, I just can’t seem to do much right these days it seems. That all added on to the stuff which happened last week with the lathe I am really struggling, though this isn’t really the place to talk about that kind of stuff. I just want to hide from the world.

As usual feel free to give feedback or suggestions in the comments. Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones and stay safe.