Ebony and Paua Shell FP in a Rustic Styling

A few times now I have been attracted to a certain Japanese pen company's website, admiring the nice work they do on their pens, particularly their beautiful work in ebony and in rosewood.  So I recently had a look at their prices ($1500 - 2500), and very quickly decided that buying one of their pens would never be in my future.  So I decided that I would just make one myself.

Of course while this pen is inspired (especially in shape) by the ones I noted above, I have also taken it in my own direction, wanting to make a pen (for me) that really spoke to me.

I have a nice collection of pieces of various exotic woods, and after sifting through them decided on ebony.  Incredibly messy to work with (sticky black dust everywhere), but the end results are usually very much worth it.

One of the problems that I have had with wood pens before is their tendency for the nib to dry out over a few days.  This has been the case whether I leave the cap unsealed inside, sealed with CA, sealed with polymerizing oil, with epoxy, etc.  One solution I came up with was to add a small plastic inner cap that covers the nib.  This worked fairly well, but was still not entirely satisfactory.  This time, what I did was to create an acrylic liner that filed the entire cap, continuous with the thread (I could have done this in ebonite too, but that seemed like a bit of a waste of expensive ebonite).  This has worked beautifully, and there are absolutely no dry-out issues in this pen.  Finally, the cap is flared at the top to allow a nice big paua shell inlay.

Another new technique I wanted to try on this pen was to add a cap band, something that I have not really gotten in the habit of doing.  But in this case, I wanted a bit of gold colour to contrast against the ebonite, and to complement the 18K nib.  An interesting process that involved a bit of figuring, some serious frustration, a few unsavoury words, but ultimately a happy success.

Another break form my usual styling was to change the active thread location on the end of the barrel to allow for a larger 'thread-free' grip zone, making the pen more comfortable to hold.  The barrel itself is shaped to allow a nice perch for posting the cap, which fits on the barrel quite securely and with great balance.   To finish off the look of the pen, I added another paua shell inlay to the end of the barrel.

The pen is fitted with a medium JoWo 18K nib, which writes like a dream.

Yep, this pen fanatic is smiling today.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers,

Ken