Blog

It shouldn’t be you reading this really. The person reading this ought to be that special someone in your life who likes to buy you a present from time to time, but never knows what to give you. And why don’t they know what to give you?  Oh come on! There’ll be any number of reasons. I’m difficult to buy for / I’m very particular and I like to choose things myself / I’ve got everything already / I’m not sure what I want yet / I don’t ...

No matter where you live on Planet Earth, if you aren’t aware of Donald Trump’s new trade tariffs, or at least the fact that The White House has announced new trade tariffs, it’s possible that you might in fact not be living on Planet Earth at all. I don’t mean to be flippant or facetious, and the real purpose of this blog is to explain what these new tariffs mean to our customers in the USA (which, know right from the start, is actually really good news), but I would ...

Sadly it’s one of those immutable facts of life - things inevitably go up in price. We try not to do it though. I realise that sounds a bit silly, since all businesses need to make a profit in order to remain in business, however, we’ve been around for 10 years now - yes, it’s our 10th birthday this year, and this will be only the second time we’ve increased the prices of our pen kits. The first time was around 5 years ago, so we’ve done pretty well at ...

Yes, we’ve introduced another pen kit and it’s a click action ballpoint. It’s called the Notus and you can check it out here The thing is though that pen turners don’t make click pens - right? They prefer twist action ballpoints and it’s true to say that there are far more twist action ballpoint pen kits available than there are clickers. Why is that? Well, simply put, the perception amongst many pen turners is that click action ballpoint kits quickly fail ...

Most fountain pen cleaning fluids contain a chemical called ammonia. Ours does not, and yet it’s a powerful formulation that will deep-clean the most neglected, crusted and dried out of fountain pens. You might not think the fact that it doesn’t contain ammonia is anything special - in fact you might think that without ammonia it can’t be very good. There is a chance too that you might not know what the heck I’m talking about, so let me explain. Most, if not all ...

There are times, if you’re a woodturner, when you have a piece of wood that’s either too large or too awkward to hold on your lathe using just a scroll chuck. Often the solution is a faceplate, which threads directly onto the lathe’s spindle shaft, onto which the wood can be screwed via a multitude of holes in the faceplate. Yes, I realise that most of you already know that, but what you may not already know is that we make and sell lathe faceplates. They’re made ...

No matter where you live, you can now choose betwen delivery by Royal Mail or delivery by courier, irespective of  how large or small your order. Until now, courier shipping has been configured to only show up on our website as an option if orders that are too heavy for Royal Mail to handle. We've just changed all that, and from now on, courier shipiing is available as an option on all orders, to all countries, no matter how large or small the order - and we'll be keeping it ...

Phil Dart November 2022 You may not have come across abrasive pastes before now. There again, you might have done, even if you’re a traditionalist - and the one you might have come across most is Yorkshire Grit. Unless you’re in the US though, you might need to find an alternative to Yorkshire Grit fairly soon, but more on that a bit later. What the heck is an abrasive paste anyway? They’re all much the same as each other to be honest - they consist of a blend ...

New pen kit look-up tables. It’s been a shockingly long time since we wrote anything on our blog. We know that our articles are well read, so you might even say we’ve been neglectful. It isn’t neglect though I assure you - it’s more that we’ve just been, well, very busy. It’s high time then that we put that right, so firstly I’m going to tell you about some of the things that have been keeping us busy in that time, and then I’m going to ...

Yep, every year on the first Friday in November, it’s International Fountain Pen Day, and has been since it was introduced in 2012. This year, the first Friday in November is the 5th, which happens to be today.   Who introduced it? We have absolutely no idea, but unlike some other tenuous attempts at creating international something-or-other days, International Fountain Pen Day has definitely caught on in the psyche and consciousness of those who are in to fountain pens, and is ...