* pen making

Hi everyone, hope you are all ok and not getting too bored with the various lockdowns over the world. Hope you are staying safe and healthy. We are all safe although the kids are going nuts now.

Anyway, pen making. So I tried something I have never tried before, well I kind of have tried them before at a very small level though. I had one of my previous clients approach me and ask whether I could make a pen based upon something like [this](https://i.etsystatic.com/14196814/r/il/33ef31/1416139780/il_794xN.1416139780_cmp7.jpg). I have yet to tackled faceted pens and in the past doing drawings of pens with dimensions on have not really worked as part of the design process for me. I had a blank I didn’t know what to do with and I could see it in my head so I figured why not.

I’ll go through the process of how I made it first before showing the photos. So, I started with a round blank and I got it to a diameter a bit wider than I wanted the pen to actually be and I put it in my swivel vice. I had already drilled out the cap and barrel as well as threading them together. So, in the vice it went screwed together as one piece and I got the spirit level on it making sure it was straight. I started out flattening one side then turned it so the opposing side was face up, I flattened that side then turned it so I was clamping on those flat edges and did another, turning it each time so I would do one side then the opposing side. One I was happy with it I cut the end off at a slant as I would do with my Zeus model. Once it was shaped I sanded it by hand from 180 up to 800, as you may see in the following photos I need to go back and re-sand it. When I showed it too the client she wanted to know how it would look with uneven sides so I went back and filed them all uneven.

So here are the images:

[Flat end](https://i.imgur.com/VJ2PFtX.jpg)

[sloped end](https://i.imgur.com/3oOPcwm.jpg)

[full pen](https://i.imgur.com/wM9NYwB.jpg)

[Horizontal](https://i.imgur.com/XaUUMRV.jpg)

* the inks

If you are wondering about the inks in the leading image these are the companies inks. When I sell pens I plan to offer complementary ink samples with them. See if you can guess what they are. Just a little hint, these are all diamine 30ml bottles.

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.