The Art of Pen Making

Adam and his dad have been busy working away on their new wood lathe and I had Adam teach me how to make a pen. You have to buy a pen kit for all of the innards of a pen, but you basically build it and assemble it yourself.

You start out with a rectangular piece of wood which you saw into two parts and drill a hole down the middle.

Then, you apply some superglue inside the hole for a metal tube to be inserted.

Sand the top and bottom of the piece of wood

Then put on dorky goggles (and a hideous outfit. ((it was cold.)) and get ready to carve.

This was the best part. It reminds me a lot of pottery. The lathe (or log pincher as I like to call it) will spin the wood really really fast and you just stick your tool in there to make your piece start to take some shape and get smooth.

Pretty soon it will look something like this...

Once you get all of the pieces and guts assembled, voila! You have a pen. This one is for my mom.

Oh yeah, and make sure you have a cute assistant.