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Theo's Birthday Pens

Theo is a B&B owning master baker from France. We met 'virtually' on the canal market place's Facebook page where Theo is a supporter of canal traders and regular a contributor with pictures of his perfectly formed loaves of French bread.

Theo contacted me just before Christmas asking for a pen or two to be commissioned for a milestones birthday of his in early 2015. Unfortunately at the time I was right out of the blue acrylic pen blanks that Theo had requested. Luckily I was waiting for a shipment to arrive from Australia and also had also just ordered some top quality UK supplied premium mechanism.

The only problem with accepting commission work in acrylic this time of year is that most of the process has to happen outside of the boat. It's just for far too messy to consider making a pen like this inside. When I finally got around to turning Theo's pens the temperature in the centre of Birmingham didn't rise above freezing point for two days. I even had to bring my bench top in and defrost it in front of the fire to stop the lathe sliding about. Whilst a workshop butty would be fantastic the canal and rivers trust charge is too much in my opinion for the licensing in fact any butty less than 50 foot long is charged the same rate as a fully kitted out motored boat.

Once the pen blanks had arrived from Australia it was clear that two of the three were a perfect match for a top quality fountain pen and rollerball set. To get the best colour from an acrylic pen blank you need to look at the proportion of solid and opaque colours. The decision then need to be made concerning the finished colour that need to be achieved. Painting the brass tubes that form the inside of the pen firstly insured that no ugly brass flashes change the colour, and secondly changes the saturation of the colour. Painting the tubes in this case the dark blue colour would have resulted in an almost navy coloured pen, where as painting the tubes white would change the whole pen look to a light blue colour. For this pen I chose royal blue colour or the tubes, and French blue enamel for the inside of the drilled holes. For a full belt and braces approach I also added a couple of drops of the blue enamel paint to the two part epoxy glue. The result was really worth all of the extra effort and I feel produced a beautiful set of pens.

I hope you have/had a great birthday Theo and get many years writing pleasure out of your pen set.