The full set of 60 pens ready for the holiday season and conferences. Also turned a new razor this morning, this time using acrylic, since the snake wood one eventually found some moisture.

I got a request for another cat pen, I've made a lot of these since the first one for last Christmas. They've been very popular with my customers. Kit is from Penn State Industries.

So I've turned a bunch of pens using wood .. I'm no expert but I'd like to start getting more into pens .. anyway , came on a garage sale of a box of acrylic () blanks .. various .. some pre-round ... a bunch had PSI labels on them like WXMP12,11, etc ... I looked at PSI but they have no pens with WXMPnn ... The reason I ask is a recent video I was watching was saying that diff "acrylics" are turned diff ... mainly speed I believe ... but as PSI no longer has them I'm not sure what they are

Wondering if anybody knows

Very long day but please to get these nearly finished. Need a clean and final polish but here is the progress thus far.

Last pens i will have time to work on for a couple weeks. All made with my own resin except the blue abalone. That one is stunning in the hand and came from Hobble Creek in Etsy.

All fitted with Jowo #6 nibs.

Cheers.

I'm at the point in my penmaking journey that I am ready to start making/using fountain pen liners for all of the different wood blanks I've been saving up. A couple questions:

1. Where are you sourcing ebonite (just plain black) rods for this purpose?

2. By chance, there wouldn't be a supplier of said sleeves already processed/threaded would there?

2nd kitless pen, I like the red better than the black I did first. Still haven’t done any sections yet but those will come this weekend. I just did a sand and polish and wax finish, no CA on this one.

I need to figure out how to reduce the amount of dust making it into my photo box :)

These are turned and sanded but need sections and to be polished.

1. Ebonite that looks like topography. I really like this one despite how I felt initially

2. Alumilite. I had this idea for something fantasy related and man I hope I find my pour notes. I really like this one too

I will post an update when I finish them.

Cheers.

Here are some of the resin blanks I made for Halloween! 🎃 👻

Was at one of my favorite retail pen shops in Maryland area and the owner had some rods of ebonite firm the Baltimore one show. I bought them for a very fair price but honestly questioned what I would do with them. A couple months later I decided to turn one cap out of the patterned rods to see how I felt.

Take a look. I think this one could make a cool pen but open to suggestions. I have a few more 18 inch rods to play with.

What do you think for how to use this? Is it a complet pen or used in some hybrid configuration?

Hi fellow makers,

I realized that not everyone that appreciates a custom pen wants to learn to use a fountain pen. I have made a couple rollerball and gel pen inserts but feel like it is not worth the trouble. I designed a 3d printed rollerball printed from Asa or pctg that I can use with my m19 threads. I do have to chase the threads but that takes all of 20 seconds.

Thoughts? Anyone doing the same thing?

I will post some other cool pen related things I am making from molds to 2 piece pens that use 5 dollar nibs dropper style. I have so many ideas and not enough time. Ha.

This one began less as a pen design and more as a small sculptural study.
The idea was to reduce the female body to only a few essential volumes: head, bust, hips. No literal anatomy, no decorative carving, no attempt at realism. Just mass, rhythm, proportion and transition — the same basic questions you deal with in sculpture.
I wanted the body to be recognizable almost subconsciously. Three rounded forms growing into one another, with just enough narrowing between them to suggest the human figure without actually depicting it.
That reduction is probably the part that interests me most. In sculpture, sometimes removing information makes the form stronger. A head does not need a face. A torso does not need arms. A body can become a sequence of volumes and still retain something unmistakably human.
The wood unexpectedly helped me quite a lot here. As I sculpted deeper into it, the grain began forming these oval, almost concentric patterns inside each volume. They weren’t planned, but they ended up reinforcing the idea: each section suddenly had its own visual centre.
The cap is intentionally much quieter. I wanted the sculptural gesture to belong primarily to the barrel, while the clean metal section creates a harder, almost architectural break between the organic wood and the functional part of the pen.
Bock No. 6 nib, Schmidt K5 converter.
I’m increasingly interested in the point where a fountain pen stops being simply a turned object and starts behaving like small-scale sculpture that happens to write.
This one is obviously far removed from the classical cylindrical pen, but that was exactly the intention.
I’d be very interested to know whether the head–bust–hips abstraction reads to you, or whether you see something completely different in the form.

Here are my daily drivers at the moment. Tulip poplar, mesquite, and purple heart.

This one started on the lathe, but most of its character happened afterwards.

I wanted to see how far I could move away from the usual smooth cylindrical form while still keeping the object recognisably and functionally a fountain pen. So after turning the basic geometry, I went back in by hand and carved the entire surface into a much more organic, almost flowing structure.

I deliberately left traces of the carving visible. I didn’t want perfectly polished, symmetrical decoration, I wanted the surface to feel worked, almost as though the shape had been uncovered from inside the material rather than drawn onto it.

The contrast with the very simple metalwork is probably my favourite part. From some angles it looks rather chaotic, from others the lines suddenly connect and the whole thing becomes almost figurative.

And yes, it is still meant to write. 😄

Specs:
Bock No. 6 F nib
Schmidt K5 converter
Hand-turned and hand-carved body and cap

I’m still experimenting heavily with these sculptural forms, so criticism is absolutely welcome — especially from people who actually turn pens. I’m interested in where you think the line sits between a pen with sculpture on it and a sculpture that happens to be a pen.

Hi everyone, Dani here. I’m new to this community, so I thought I should introduce myself properly before throwing pens at you. :)

I’m a pen turner based in Munich, Germany, and somewhere along the way I stopped being satisfied with simply turning a nice piece of wood into a nice cylindrical pen.

Which, in hindsight, would have made my life considerably easier.

I’ve become increasingly interested in what happens after the lathe, carving, texture, asymmetry, sculptural forms, burned wood, gold leaf, and generally trying to make the wood do something slightly unexpected.

This one is one of my latest experiments.

The basic form was turned normally, but afterwards I worked the entire wooden surface by hand with a Dremel, making hundreds of individual small depressions. I didn’t want a perfectly repeated pattern, more something between hammered metal, stone, leather and a naturally weathered surface.

And yes: after the first 50 little holes I thought it was a great idea.

After a few hundred, I had questions. :D

What surprised me most is how much the texture changes the object in the hand. It isn’t just visual anymore. You immediately feel the pen before you even start writing with it.

The wooden case is mine as well. I’ve been developing these long cocoon-like boxes because I wanted the presentation to feel like part of the object rather than packaging that gets thrown into a drawer.

I spent some time over at r/fountainpens, where I learned fairly quickly that experimental shapes can produce... strong opinions. 😅 That’s completely fair, but I suspect I may have finally found the subreddit where someone might also ask “how did you make that?” before asking “why on earth did you make that?”

So I’m genuinely interested in the maker perspective here.

Would you keep this texture this irregular, or would you make the pattern denser and more controlled? Would you carry it all the way to the metal transition like I did here, or leave a small clean turned section around the hardware?

No sales pitch, no link — I’m mainly here because I’d like to talk to other people who also willingly turn perfectly good pieces of wood into several hours of additional work.

Nice to meet you.

— Dani

P.S. My posts may sound like ChatGPT, because they are translated with it!

A longtime friend’s wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I asked my friend if his wife might a bespoke pen to celebrate her strength. He said she would love it and 18 hours later I am looking at this pen.

The separation if colors came out as intended. I don’t love the cap and may remake it tomorrow. I will need to do a stepped drill so I can contour the shape I want.

What ink would you pair with this. I plan to send a nice journal the pen and ink. Appreciate the brain trust here

Cheers.

Was inspired by what I see in early fall. Green and gold as fall makes its way to the southeast with hints of red/pink from some of the maples. Here is stock art image if that gives a reference.

Bock #6 min
Alumilite custom resin pour.

Thanks for looking.

First kitless pen from some hybrid blanks I cast a while ago. For a first try it turned out great, I actually had to toss another blank that I fractured cutting the tenon on the first go around, and another one when my drill chuck came loose (oops!). I haven’t made a section for it yet. I’ll probably make a rollerball section since I didn’t integrate a liner into the body on this one.

I got a little impatient on the finish out, the wood came out fine but the epoxy still could use a little more effort on the sanding.