Why No Two Wooden Pens Are Ever the Same

Handmade pens and the individuality of natural materials.

There’s something rather wonderful about wood.

You can start with two pieces from the same tree, cut them next to each other, turn them on the lathe using exactly the same settings, sand them in exactly the same way and finish them with exactly the same finish…

…and they can still come out looking completely different.

Which, frankly, is one of the reasons I love making wooden pens.

If I wanted everything to look exactly the same, I probably wouldn’t be making handmade pens.

I’d be making ballpoint pens by the

thousand and spending my days

arguing with a machine. And machines,

in my experience, are terrible

conversationalists.

Wood Has a Personality

One of the things I love about making pens is that you never completely know what you're going to uncover.

A piece of wood might look fairly ordinary before it goes on the lathe. Then you start turning it and suddenly the grain appears.

A swirl.

A dark streak.

A flash of colour.

A knot.

A little figuring that you couldn't see before.

Sometimes the wood almost seems to reveal itself as you work.

And sometimes it reveals itself by doing something completely unexpected.

That's part of the fun.

Wood isn't manufactured to a specification. It grew.

It dealt with weather, sunlight, insects, drought, rain, wind and probably the occasional squirrel having a bad day.

All of that leaves its mark.

And those marks are what make the finished pen unique.

Even the Same Tree Can Produce Different Pens

It's easy to assume that if two pens are made from the same type of wood, they'll look the same.

But that's rarely how it works.

Take something like walnut.

One piece might have relatively straight grain and a warm, consistent colour.

Another might have dramatic figuring, darker streaks or almost chocolate-coloured sections.

And another piece might look completely different again.

That's because I'm not starting with a sheet of material produced in a factory.

I'm starting with a piece of a tree.

And trees, rather annoyingly from a manufacturing point of view, don't grow to a template.

Thankfully.

Then I Get Involved

The wood might be unique when it arrives in my workshop, but that's only the beginning.

Where I cut it matters.

How I orientate the grain matters.

Which section becomes the top of the pen and which becomes the bottom matters.

How much material I remove matters.

And sometimes I make decisions that don't make much sense until the pen starts taking shape.

I'll turn a blank, stop, look at it and think:

"That's interesting."

Then I'll turn it a little more.

"Oh… that's REALLY interesting."

Then, occasionally:

"Oh dear."

That's pen making.

There is a point in every project where you have to trust the material and your own judgement.

Sometimes the wood rewards you.

Sometimes it teaches you a lesson.

Usually involving sandpaper.

I Don't Try to Hide the Character

One of the biggest differences between a handmade pen and a mass-produced pen is that I don't want every little natural variation to disappear.

I want the character to remain.

If there's an unusual grain pattern, I want you to see it.

If there's a colour change, I want it to be part of the pen.

If the grain moves around the barrel, that's not a defect.

That's the point.

I've always thought that trying to make every wooden pen perfectly uniform would be a bit like taking a photograph of a beautiful landscape and then using Photoshop to make every tree identical.

Technically impressive.

Completely missing the point.

Sometimes the Wood Has Other Ideas

And then there are the pieces of wood that don't behave themselves.

Cracks.

Voids.

Soft spots.

Unexpected grain.

Tiny imperfections that suddenly become very obvious when you've removed half the material.

This is where stabilised wood, resin and other materials can come into their own.

Sometimes I can preserve something that would otherwise be unusable.

Sometimes I can fill a natural void with resin.

Sometimes I can combine wood and resin to create something that simply wouldn't exist in nature.

And sometimes I start with an idea and the material politely tells me that my idea is rubbish.

I have learned to listen.

Usually.

That's Why I Like One-Off Pens

When you buy a mass-produced pen, the expectation is that the next one will look exactly like the one you bought.

With one of my handmade pens, the opposite is true.

The expectation is that it won't.

That particular piece of wood will never come around again in exactly the same way.

Even if I bought another blank from the same supplier, from the same species of tree, it wouldn't be the same.

The grain would be different.

The colour would be different.

The figuring would be different.

The way I cut it would be different.

And therefore the pen would be different.

That's rather special.

A Little Bit of the Tree Comes With You

There's something quite lovely about the idea that a wooden pen carries a little piece of something that took decades to grow.

The tree didn't grow with the intention of becoming a fountain pen.

It didn't know it was going to end up on my lathe.

It certainly didn't know I'd be sitting in a workshop covered in wood dust trying to work out why I'd just made that particular cut.

But eventually, its journey can continue as something that gets used every day.

A pen that sits on a desk.

Signs something important.

Writes a letter.

Keeps a journal.

Or simply gets picked up because it feels nice in your hand.

And every time you use it, you're holding something that no factory could reproduce exactly.

That's the Beauty of Handmade

I think that's what handmade really means.

It isn't necessarily about making something absolutely perfect.

It's about making something with character.

Something where the material, the maker and the process all leave their fingerprints on the finished object.

That's why I don't want every pen I make to look the same.

I want each one to have its own story.

Some are quiet.

Some are colourful.

Some are elegant.

Some are slightly eccentric.

And, occasionally, one comes out looking as though it has spent the evening drinking whisky with a badger.

But they're all different.

And that's exactly how they should be.

Because when you buy a handmade wooden pen, you're not just buying a pen.

You're buying that pen.

The particular piece of wood.

The particular grain.

The particular cut.

The particular decisions I made while making it.

And there will never be another one exactly like it.

That's not a flaw.

That's the whole point.