* Pen making

My brain is not with it today so I can’t promise this will be any good. Anyway let’s get on with the post shall we?

I haven’t had time to get photos of the two series of pens I am starting. I can at least tell you about them and the challenges that I am meeting while making these pens. I want to get a group of them together and photograph them using the decent camera. Hopefully I will have time in the week if work doesn’t wipe me out like it has this week. I have not really had the chance to do much on the pen work this week because of work.

Ok so the first series of pens I am doing I am going back to a material I kind of started working on when it came to pen making, and that being ebonite. I am going to mix this with a new skill I have learned, that of metal work. So I am going to start off by making one of each of the designs I have including the two new ones I am developing. These are all going to be finished up to a high shine and on the barrel after the cap threads there is going to be a metal band which complements the colour of the ebonite. It won’t be the cheapest set to make but I think it will look amazing when it is done. I have done 3 so far, one in a red and black ebonite, one in a blue and black and then one in solid black. They all look pretty cool with the metal bands.

The other set I am going to do utilise the end of the day blanks my wife and I have been making over the past year. Basically these are blanks made out of the excess resin while filling the moulds. This is then poured into the short square blanks that I have. Once these are cured they usually are full within 2 or 3 sets of blanks. Each one it utterly unique so I thought they would make for a cool mismatching set, the thing that ties each one together is the clear ends and the black ebonite sections. I have to add the clear ends and section because there simply isn’t enough material to make a pen from one and mixing 2 of them would just look, well, wrong. You can see the red and black ebonite one in [this image](https://i.imgur.com/fy2lhVy.jpg) the end of the day one is there too. Also shown in that image are last weeks pens.

I have just a few other things. I have finally cracked #6 Jowo sections I had a commission to do just the section to go with someones pen and it [worked](https://i.imgur.com/O5F9pNU.jpg). The next bugbear to get over is bock #5, I have no doubt I will get there at some point, [just not now](https://i.imgur.com/J73mCFL.jpg). Another thing I am getting better at are demonstrators, I had another commission for one of them and it came out [quite nicely](https://i.imgur.com/2NFbMvS.jpg). Then the last thing I have done, I made my own roll stop out of the [matching blank](https://i.imgur.com/0ZuAvUd.jpg), pain in the backside to fit and polish but in the end I think the extra work is worth it.

Now I am off to play some star wars to try and get my brain out of the state it is currently in.

As usual feel free to give suggestions for where these updates go in the comments. Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones and stay safe.