So I’ve been prototyping, testing and developing brass dip pens for quite a while now. I sold a whole metric buttload of them last year and I’ve continued tinkering in the meantime with the production and fine tuning of them to the point that I’m really happy with the improvements I’ve made to the design.

This whole thing grew out of my eternal quest to find a ‘magic’ pen that I’ve been on for most of a decade now. I was interested in trying to find out how to manipulate everyday stuff into something that would give me an interesting line to draw with. I started with making pens out of coke cans, then biscuit tins, all the way up to steel and aluminium box section of varying gauges. Along the way I’ve cut my fingers, had shards of metal embedded in my hands, poisoned myself with brass dust, nearly impaled myself dozens of times and spent lots of money on power tools. It’s been great fun.

The standalone dip pens are all the way up to version 10 now. (if you want to buy one you can do so here)

The next step in this is to work on a more practical version. I’ve prototyped a few fountain pen variations and they are starting to work rather well. It is based on a Jinhao body so it works with a converter or a cartridge. The Jinhao pens are very affordable and have a really nice weighting balance, so this is a really nice fit.

Here’s a short video of me demonstrating one of the prototypes in action showing some of the range of marks that you can achieve with it. It isn’t really like any other pen I’ve ever used!

I'm still exploring a couple of ways of ironing out the bugs with ink flow (tending to get too much or too little at the moment) and then I'll be looking at producing a whole bunch to sell. Watch this space!