These are the pens I made for Mark and Jill. Now that they have them, I asked Our Benevolent Ungulate to restore this post.





I'm happy, they're happy, and all is right with the world, mostly.

For the "How-to-do-it" segment of our pen turner's club meeting, I was asked if I would demonstrate how I make this hybrid pen. I haven't made one in awhile, so I did this today to refresh my memory.

This is my own design, and as far as I know, I'm the only one who makes it. It isn't an especially difficult pen to make, although the measuring, selection of refills, and carefully considering spring tension are critical to success. The biggest reason why no one but me...

That's the whole secret to making pens, really. Can you repeat the process?

In a thread I'm not going to bother to look up, Tug bemoaned the passing of complementary pens given away by the pharmaceutical companies. There was something said about "those are the bestest pens in the Whole Wide World." Perhaps I'm paraphrasing.

Anyway, I'm only human, so I decided to take umbrage at the statement, and treat it as a challenge. This is what I came up with:

...

When working on a Very Important Project, the conscientious pen maker allows himself enough time to make a couple of prototypes. This gives him an idea of how pieces he's selected actually look when they're all stuck together, and, in fact, the problems he's going to run into when he tries to stick them all together. This is a protoype:



There are at least four things wrong with it that...