This is sometimes the hardest part! Oftentimes we will be stuck staring at a pile of materials, parts, and colors, just waiting for inspiration to strike. We've drawn inspiration from holidays, the weather, animals, something funny someone said... just about anything!

A pen "blank" refers to what will make up the body of the pen. We very, very rarely purchase store-bought blanks; almost all of our blanks are made in-house. We do all of our own segmenting and pour our own resin pens. This allows us to make any combination we wish, and not be stuck with what the store has in stock.

Sometimes this is Step 2, sometimes this is Step 3. Once materials are selected, pen hardware needs to be chosen. Do we think the blank will look good in a classy fountain pen? Or does it speak more to a funky modified slimline? Will wood grain alignment get messed up in a twist pen? Would the materials work better in a click pen?

Once hardware is chosen, a plating needs to be picked. Oftentimes we will select a plating to complement the colors in the blank. For example, if the blank has gold fleck, it will probably look good with gold-plated hardware. Is there a lot of black or black streaking? Then maybe a black enamel kit is the ticket!

This is where things can start to get really complicated. Depending on the desired outcome, this may be as simple as drilling the blank for the brass tubes, or as complicated as busting out the trigonometry, calculators, and working with dozens of tiny slices of varying materials. A blank could be prepared in an hour or over several days; it depends on the complexity.

At this point, the blank looks nothing like a pen. Once construction is complete, the blank will need to be drilled with the appropriately-sized bit for the pen hardware chosen. Catastrophe can happen at this stage; if too much heat is allowed to build up when drilling, the blank can shatter and be ruined.

A smooth brass tube has a harder time "sticking" to the inside of the newly-drilled pen blank. To assist our adhesive, we need to roughen up the brass tubes. This is simply done with rough sandpaper, usually around 60-grit.

Assuming the blank didn't explode in the above step, the brass tubes will now need to be seated in the newly drilled blanks. There could be additional work needed here too depending on the materials (painting of the tubes, painting of the blank, etc.). Generally we prefer to use epoxy, but CA glue can be used as well. We tend to glue our hands to the blank when using CA.

Now that the tubes are snugly seated and the adhesive is dry, the ends of the blank need to be squared to the embedded brass tubes. This step is very important and easy to ruin; if the ends are not perfectly square, the pen may not be able to be assembled at the very end. There are several ways to square the ends; we are partial to the disc sander.

It's time to make sawdust (or resin dust, or metal dust)! Now that the ends are square, the blank is mounted onto the lathe with special hardware and turned down to the desired profile. This sounds simple, but it's not. There is the potential to chip, damage, or explode the blank on the lathe (this is why we wear face shields and safety glasses). Your creativity can go wild here - wire burns, divets, texturing, curves, and other shapes can be added at this point.

Once the pen has been shaped with the lathe tools, it's time to sand. Typically at this stage, we will sand through 600-grit, stopping in-between each grit to sand with the grain of the blank to minimize scratch marks.

After sanding, it's time to move on to wet sanding. Special pads are used to wet sand on the lathe, and we will go through 12,000 roughness at the wet sanding stage. Sometimes this process will need to be repeated a few time if stubborn scratches are present.

At this point, a decision needs to be made on finish type. Does an oil finish make more sense? What about wax? Would this pen benefit from a high-gloss CA coat? Or is it all resin and need a high polish? If a CA finish is chosen, that finish will need to be applied and wet sanded again.

Once the final finish is applied, the buffing wheels are busted out, mounted on the lathe, and the pen body is buffed through a 3-stage buffing system. This will really make the pen shiny!

Once the pen body is complete, it's time to install the hardware. Typically, a pen press is mounted onto the lathe and the parts are compression-fit into the brass tubes. Some pen hardware needs further assembly or glue-up. Catastrophe can strike at this stage too; if you press too hard the pen tube can crack or the finish can crackle.

The pen is now all put together, and it's time to test that it works! We will extend and retract the refill multiple times, check the click or twist mechanism, and swap the refills. Before a pen is shipped out, we remove any wax coverings on the nib and make sure it writes well. If there's a problem, back to the shop it goes.