I made some new dip pens

[amk]

My latest batch of dip pens. The neighbours cut down a big old hedge and I had some of that wood to work with, plus a couple of nice bits of plum that turned up in our firewood.

For two of these pens I decided to use the lathe - one plum pen, nice and dry, but the other was wet thuya. i haven't turned wet wood before - it was like turning a mixture of celery and butter, very soft and made little crunchy noises like chomping. The plum pen had some nice bark on the underside so I left that unturned at the 'feather end of the quill pen' so to speak.


The freeform spiral pen was made out of a bit of fresh hazel, another donation from a neighbour who was trimming one of her trees. I've played around a bit with the grip - I am doing a lot of work on changing the grip sections to make them more comfortable, motivated by my own experience of rheumatoid arthritis.

I'll be working on a few more. I quite enjoy making dip pens - relaxing in between more important, or bigger, projects in the workshop.