I am Russ Fairfield, and this is the story of my adventures into making pens from wood. Any resemblance to the actual history of the craft is coincidental, and the dates are as I remember them.
Pens are a relatively new phenomenon in the world of woodturning. I made my first pen from a kit back in the “dark ages” of pencrafting. That was 1987. There were no Mini-Lathes, Berea was still a hardwood dealer, Woodcraft was a catalog with a warehouse in PA, nobody had heard of the Internet, and there was only one pen kit - the basic "Cross" style pen that is now known as the "Slim-Line". I don’t remember seeing a Craft Supplies catalog, I hadn’t heard of Penn State, and HUT was selling their finishing wax. That was the world of making pens in 1987.
The first published article I saw on making a wooden pen was an article in Wood Magazine sometime in 1989(?). It showed how to make a pen from a kit that was available in the Woodcraft catalog, using a drill press to spin the wood, and a screwdriver that was ground into a turning tool. The result was a pen that looked like it had been turned in a drill press with a screwdriver. But, I had a lathe, and I could make a better pen than that.
Those really were the “good old days” for making pens. Wooden pens were a novelty and very few people had ever seen one of them before. I didn’t know of another person who was making pens, so there was no competition. I could sell the "Cross" (now called the "Slim-Line") pens for $15 apiece as fast as I could make them. Compare that with today, when everyone who stops at the booth tells me about their relative or neighbor who is making pens, every woodturner in every show is selling pens, and there are at least 3 who are selling nothing but pens; and the "Slim-Line" still sells for $15.
There were few changes over the next several years. The "Parker" style "double-twist" ballpoint pen was introduced in the early 1990's, and was soon joined by the fountain and rollerball pens of the same design.
Titanium Gold plating was the latest thing in the mid-1990's. About that same time there was a new kit called the "Mont Blanc" (now called the Euro) style that was a "Parker" with a round top on the cap. More pen turners started showing up at the craft shows, and some of them sold nothing but pens. Some of them had several hundred pens on display. Hut Products started selling pen blanks, stabilized wood was a new product, and the first of the plastic pen blanks became available as "Crushed Velvet". The many sources for the exotic plastic blanks we have today were still 10-years in the future.
I started to modify the "Cross" kits sometime in the mid-1990's because I wanted to have a larger pen, but without the added weight of the "Parker" series. About that same time the "Cross" started to be referred to as the “Slim-Line” and I used a takeoff from that name to prevent confusion with the Cross trade-mark. That was the beginning of the “Russ-Line” pen without a centerband. It was soon followed by the “Fat-Line”, a larger pen that had a center-band made from a piece of plastic pen blank, and the “Long-Line” desk pen. All were made from the basic "Slim-Line" kit. The "Russ-Line", or some variation of it, has continued to be my best selling ballpoint pen.
These are those first modified Slim-Line pens ca. 1995. The basic Slim-Line pen is on top, followed by the Russ-Line, the Fat-Line, and the Long-Line. I haven't made a stock Slim-Line pen in years.
1996 seemed like the year when things started to change in the marketplace. There were a lot more people making pens, and the manufacturers and retailers started to pay attention. What has followed in the years since has been like opening a flood gate of pen kits, supplies, Vendors, and pen turners.
I retired in 1998, and looked to having pens and woodturning provide a supplemental income. To this end, I explored the higher priced pen market. The "Russ-Line" and its descendents had shown me that there was a market for a pen the didn’t look like it had started its life as a kit, and that people were willing to pay a higher price for them. Besides that, there was the challenge of doing something new. In 2000, I started to develop a custom Fountain Pen that was as far from a kit as possible. I wanted to show wood, and I wanted a pen that didn’t look like the picture in the catalog. I had to figure out the techniques for making what was to become known as the “Closed End Pen”, and making a clip attachment that was hidden inside of the wood. Nobody else was making these things, and if they were, they weren’t talking about it. I was on my own.
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My first custom fountain pen, made in about 2001. It began its life as a Parker "snap cap" fountain pen kit. To my knowledge, this was the first "closed-end pen", now called by that name because the end of the pen was solid wood, and not an open tube that was filled with a metal posting cap. This was my entry into the Pen Makers Guild, because it was different from any other pen they had seen at the time.
The cap is like it is because I didn't know what else to do with it .
I solved the cap problem by recessing the clip attachment, and filling the void with a piece of wood and capping it with Ivory.
The Ivory is legal because it came from old piano keys.
The replacement nib problem has now been solved with new high quality Gold nibs that are a direct screw-in replacement for the kit nibs. Pen kits with better threads in the cap are now available and I have been working with the "Baron" and "El Grande" families of kit parts to make a similar fountain pen. Many pencradters are cutting their own threads with their lathe or special taps and dies.
These pens put me into the over-$100 class, and I now had to call them "writing instruments". But, I soon discovered that I had a big problem - the people who would buy these pens expected a high quality 18k or 14k solid Gold writing nib, and I was using the $4.00 nib from the kit. Although the kit nib was a fair quality plated steel nib, it wasn’t solid Gold, and it wasn't any better than the nib on the "Waterman" fountain oen that sold for $35 at the Office Depot. There was nothing available from the kit suppliers. This was not a simple case of buying a nib and screwing it into the end of the pen because our kits used a different thread from the commercial fountain pens. . I bought a couple nibs from Bexley, a respected maker of fountain pens, figured out how to make an adapter so they could be used with the kit threads, and I was in the $200 pen market. The Bexley name made them an easy sale.
The next pen was a screw cap pen that was closed on both ends. The clip is secured with a screw that is inserted through the open end of the cap. This is a nice pen that is burdened with the terrible metal cap threads in this kit.
My latest version of the "Russ-Line" pen. I have been using the "Streamline" kit from Berea because the clip looks better.
A recent "Baron" in a rollerball version. Both ends are closed on this one, and the wood is Holly.
This page was last updated: December 10, 2011
The modified Ameroclassic with a screw cap. This pen is burdened with terrible threads.
The pens don't look much different from those I was making from the "Ameroclassic" kits that I was using a few years ago, but they are better kits that make into better and lighter weight pens with better cap threads.
I started making video presentations in 2004. They now include, “The Slim-Line Pen” for the beginners, “Advanced Pencrafting”, “Finishing Secrets for PenS”, and the new "More Advanced OPencraftiung", and "The Collectors Pen".
I have given up on my ambitions to become a famous maker of fountain pens, but I still find it a challenge to extract the most from that bag of kit parts.
And, I am still making ballpoint pens from the "Slim-Line" kits.
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