How to Make a Twig Pen

by funtogether

14K29622

Intro: How to Make a Twig Pen

Wood pens that have been turned on a lathe are awesome. Unfortunately, not everyone owns a lathe (although you can make your own). The Twig Pen/Pencil is a good alternative to a turned pen, and it stills maintains an aura of originality. I got the idea for this project here. I give all credit for the idea to the author who created the aforementioned link.

Note: For this project you don't need a lathe, but you will still need some other basic tools.

STEP 1: Materials

For this project you'll need the following:
A Drill w/ Small Drill Bit
An Approx. 8mm Twig
An Old Pen Cartridge or A Stick of 2mm Lead
A Saw
A Pair of Scissors
A Container of Krazy Glue
A Permanent Marker
A Vice

STEP 2: Drilling the Twig

Cut off one end of your twig with a saw, and clamp the twig in a vice with the cut side side facing upward. Drill a hole down the center of the twig, until your drill bit can go no farther. Make sure to get it down the center or else you'll drill out the side of your stick.

STEP 3: Fitting the Cartridge

Compare your pen cartridge/mm lead to your drill bit. You are going to need to cut your cartridge to about the length of your drill bit or maybe slightly longer. 2mm longer than your drill bit is about good. Apply glue to your now cut pen cartridge/lead, and slide it into the hole in the stick. It should look similar to the picture.
Whittle the end down to a suitable "pencil-ish" angle, and enjoy owning your very own twig pen!

20 Comments

freementia 8 years ago

I've learned that if you pull the metal nib out of the ink stick, and cut from that end, you avoid ink coming out of the back end of the stick. Just my 2 cents.

funtogether 8 years ago

Awesome idea! I hadn't thought of that!

tritian 9 years ago

simple and awesome! well done!

WorldInLust 9 years ago

This is pretty cool and very easy!

duck creek 9 years ago

I'll come back later. I know not what this is yet.

bo'leary3 9 years ago

This looks like a cool idea and I have a metric butt ton of twigs as I am clearing a bunch of trees from our property for our home and garage... ;)

lbrewer42 9 years ago

Neat idea.

This reminds me of when I was a kid and used to cut off the tip of
seagull or turkey feathers and then shove an pen's ink tube into them.

Jumzle 9 years ago

Thanks for sharing this amazing tutorial, happy to tell you that the post has been added to http://www.Jumzle.com

rosalynn28 9 years ago

look for my instructable, its called "twig pencils"

Jeph Diel 9 years ago

this is awesome I totally want to make this

funtogether 9 years ago

Great! You should. It's easy! You should post pictures of it here when you're done!