Introduction: Awesome Fine Tipped Stylus!
At work I use a stylus to take notes on my ipad all the time.
I really don't enjoy the rubber tipped styluses (styli?). They stick to the screen and drag along like a fat dog refusing a walk.
You can buy a nice one, but at the rate I lose pens, I just can't trust myself with a $30.00 pen let alone a $159.00 Apple Pencil. (I know.. they have extra features, cool if you are a designer and work pays for one, but I'm a social worker).
I did a bit of internet research and found an idea that works really well, I've been making and using these for a while, but I wanted some nice ones, I wanted them to last and I wanted them to be wooden, so I've tweaked the idea a bit.
Credit where credit is due, I found it here.
I had some wood left over from making my craft cabinet. Some small offcuts, but nice wood, so I put them aside for a rainy day.
It is so smooth to use, accurate enough to write fairly fine, fun for drawing, nice to hold. Does everything I want.
It also takes less than half an hour to make a bunch of them and you can lose them or give them away as you please.
There are two types of pen within this instructable, depending on the pen you wish to make.
There is a budget (BEFORE) version, and a more expensive velostat (AFTER) version.
Both follow the same principle, but use different materials. One looks cooler, but they all function equally.
Step 1: What You Need.
An old metalic chocolate wrapper (Whittaker's chocolate from NZ is best. Because you have to eat it to get the wrapper.)
A stiff piece of plastic..I'm using off cuts of laminated paper.
Clear Cellotape
OR
Velostat
AND
A piece of wood, use a branch, or dowel, or recycled plastic, whatever you want to hold.
Double sided tape
Copper tape
A pocket knife or something to carve the pen, you could get fancy and use a lathe. Or chuck it in a drill and turn it, or use dowel and a pencil sharpener.
Some electrical tape is handy too.
Hot glue
Lighter
Step 2: Carve Your Pen
The rules are essentially that you want a tip that's nicely rounded like a broken or dull pencil.
I found that it also helps to have a flat side from the point up a couple of centimetres (an inch for you stubborn Americans!).
The rest is up to your ergonomic creativity and holding pleasure.
Step 3: Hotglue Dot on End
This is not compulsory, but it is good.
Adding a wee blob of hotglue to the end and heating it up with a lighter to make it a nice round droplet, makes a nice ball end.
Step 4: Making the Tip
If using Velostat, skip to cutting the shape.
If using everything else...
Cut a piece of plastic about 1cm by 5cm.
Stick double sided tape on both sides.
Cut a piece of metallic wrapper that is 1cm by 6cm
Stick the metallic wrapper to the plastic down one side and fold the remaining cm over the end and stick to other side.
Tape clear cellotape over metallic wrapper at the end which is folded over. Leave the other end exposed.
Cut the Velostat or tip into a O=< kind of shape, as shown in the picture.
Cut a slot on each side of the circle so that it can bend up in the middle and leave a C shape (see pictures).
Step 5: Finishing
Using the double sided tape, stick the tip to your carved pen on the flat piece you carved.
Make sure that the end of the pen touches the tip when it bends over. This allows you to put pressure on the tip without the tip bending moving about oddly.
Add a strip of copper or other metal tape over the exposed metalic wrapper part and then add some electrical tape or heat strink to help hold everything in place.. Just don't go over board, you need as much exposed metal as possible.
And you are done! Enjoy, write some stuff!