* Health

Ok so this is why things are a big flaky at the moment. For about a month or so I have been in and out of the doctors office due to a health condition due to my skin. This problem has impacted me by irritating the living hell out of me and has been keeping me awake. This has had a knock on effect with the pen stuff as I am constantly exhausted when I get home from work and don’t really have the energy to get down to the workshop in the evenings and even at the weekends its become a lot harder. Just to give you a slight insight, normally on a given weekend I can get around 6 pens done if I work on the Saturday and Sunday, that is every week. This is broken down into 2 custom orders (they generally take longer) and stock pens. It’s taken me two weekends to finish 3 pens and do the rough shaping and drilling of a Baetylus. Not ideal, and that has a knock on effect on these updates. I still want to do them as I enjoy writing them I just need a little feedback from you guys.

With the lack of new stuff at the moment what other things do you want to see in these? What do you want me to write about? Do you have any questions I can try to answer? Anyway, on with the main body of the write up.

* Pen Making

While things have been a bit slow for the reasons above I have been finding a little time to make some blanks. I am not using the epoxy any more I have started to use the Alumilite Clear Slow which is a Polyurethane I think. This has a much shorter work time (from 30 minutes for the epoxy down to 12 minutes for the clear slow), so this means I had to get moving when I do it. It is also a lot thinner than the epoxy so the colours tend to bleed into each other a bit more unless you wait until the last moment before you mix the colours together. Yes it is risky, yes I repeatedly mess it up.

So here are some of the mixes I have done so far:

[mix 1](https://i.imgur.com/qcxg6qd.jpg) [mix 2](https://i.imgur.com/XK6sFzF.jpg) [mix 3](https://i.imgur.com/kJJyM3c.jpg)

The three pens which have taken me two weekends to make are as follows too:

[pen 1[(https://i.imgur.com/4VZRo2n.jpg)

[pen 2](https://i.imgur.com/khNskGp.jpg)

[pen 3](https://i.imgur.com/EIDf5Tx.jpg)

Orders for the Baetylus have gone through the roof. People seem to be really liking it at the moment, the one in the video is a custom order for one and I have a bunch more in the works. I am hoping to get some stock ones done soon for the next pen show in March. I am trying to decide what aspect will be common across all the pens in series 2. Series 1 is now all completely sold out.

I think that is going to be it for this week. As I said above if there is anything you want me to write about please let me know, you will be helping me out.

Anways take care and stay safe.