Pen Design and Construction - Part 1

Welcome back to my blog!

People often ask how I make pens so I thought I would share my method with you.  This will be in two parts because there's a lot of ground to cover.

The process begins with a design in mind. What I wanted was a design that would appeal to men. And since you can't read my mind, here's a photo of the finished product.

These pens take a Cross refill and feature a black colored wood grip, a holly (white) centerband, and mesquite burl body. I used Indian rosewood and African blackwood for the black grips. One unique feature of the pen is the wood body extends to the top of the pen and sort of hides the finial. This visually covers the finial, emphasizing the wood body.

First I choose the wood. I have quite a library of pen blanks. The mesquite burl blanks I have cut myself out the cutoffs from larger projects. Here's the parts for a single pen laid out.

From left to right: Holly, African blackwood, and mesquite burl blanks; two brass tubes that form the backbone of the pen; a clip, a transmission that extends and retracts the refill, the tip, and the refill. (Forgot to include the finial in this photo.)

To work!

The first thing I do is cut the top of the blank at a shallow angle on my table saw. Then I create a counterbore to receive the finial. A smaller drill bit is used to drill completely through the blank to receive the brass tube.

While you weren't looking, I counterbored and drilled all of the blanks and cut them to length. I also glued the holly centerband to the grips. I should have glued them to the body. More on that later.

The nest step is to glue the brass tube into the blanks as I have pictured above. The exposed tubes will telescope into the body.

Let's pause here while the glue sets up . Any questions?