Chris, have to say you are actually a breathe of fresh air. The pen you present and blank used and your means of making need to be celebrated and then you ask for critiques tells me you are really interested in taking your love for the kitless world of pen making serious. Honesty is a means or tool of helping you achieve this and I believe you are on the right path. Gathering others thoughts can help along the way. I really do not like doing this but it was your wording of the request that struck me and said lets go for it. you took my thoughts and hopefully with no malice to help in your request. As I said the kitless world of pen making is an aspect that I have no desire to jump into. I marvel at some of the top kitless pen makers here that combine other skills to make their pens outstanding. I do what I do because it is what makes me enjoy the hobby. we as a forum share our ideas and hopefully there is crossover in the various fields of pen making and we carry them on for future members. So again my intentions and words were purely thoughts out loud and thanks for accepting as gracious as you did. Hope to see more of your work as you continue down this path.
Evening,
Umm.. you make some interesting points, and thank you for the compliments. You are correct in that when I ask for a critique, it is what I want. Guess it goes back to my photography where at exhibitions my images were always 'judged' as a matter of course.
So no, no malice noted in your remarks. If anything it has made me look at my raison d'être as a pen maker. And that has been a useful exercise.
Looking at the work of other pen makers on this and other sites was indeed the first step I made a few years back. I quickly realised that to get noticed I had to be different from the other pen makers around rather than copying them. A unique selling point I guess.
I made a conscious decision not to go down the clip route, because frankly the market is saturated, both by pen makers here and the commercial makers such as Conklin and Cross et al. I wanted to target the customers who wanted a unique handmade pen, using interesting material and high quality nibs, rather than buying a mass produced pen that has no heart.
Over the last 3 weeks I have been selling at 4 Christmas fairs, where my 'sticks' or pens have sold very well indeed, out selling my kit (and clipped) pens two to one.
After the holidays I will indeed design and turn some pens that have 'some shape' to them, but alas I will not be giving them 45 degree ends - a cut too far!
Regards,
Chriscb
