Custom Pens

[beck3906]

What is your average length of time to make a totally custom pen? I ask because I'm thinking of pursuing this direction and need to know how long I should look at building a reasonable amount of inventory.

 

[InvisibleMan]

What is your average length of time to make a totally custom pen? I ask because I'm thinking of pursuing this direction and need to know how long I should look at building a reasonable amount of inventory.

It's going to take a lot longer to build inventory.

I'm far from the most experienced at it, but I think I could do about one very simple design a day if left completely alone and forget to eat.:biggrin:. In other words, it takes me two weeks.

There is SO much that can go wrong, though, and those problems cause the actual time to be much higher on average. I've found that most catastrophic problems I've encountered happen after considerable time has been spent on a part. Things break far easier once close to final size. Then you get to practice all over again for the next one.

 

[IPD_Mr]

Rick - George is the one to talk with on this one. He has become quite good at this and it takes him a lot less than most others to do custom pens. Basically the key is doing all of each piece at once. So turn 20 sections in a couple different styles, then do 20 caps, then onto bodies and finish with finials. First you need to come up with a design that you like and your customer base is receptive to.

But seriously you need to talk with George. Pop him an email as he is leisurely traveling around and see if he has a time you two can talk.

 

[Brooks803]

Once you've done a few you get the hang of what it'll take to do one in a single session. My last one took me 2 weeks bc of my back, but otherwise I could have had it done in probably 2hrs.

Mike has a point to talk to someone who's done production custom pens. Doing them one at a time will take longer than doing several of one piece at a time. Unless you have multiple lathes the tooling changes is what takes the most time for me.

 

[firewhatfire]

Heck, I wish I could do one correct. Time irrevelant

 

[plantman]

Rick: Thats a very hard question to answer. Every pen you make is a custom pen. Be it color, shape, finish, or design. I agree with "IPD", set up to do more than one pen at a time. If I am going to do more than one pen, I will cut, drill, glue, turn, finish, and put together all the pieces one step at a time. This keeps me from having to reset any of my machines more than once. After over 10 years of pen making, I can turn and finish about 5 pens in an hour. I can also spend 2-3 days just designing a pen on paper and maybe another week cutting and putting it together. A lot depends on the skill of the penmaker and the equipment he or she has to work with. I have a firm belief in a dedicated machine for each task so you don't have to move things around to compleat each step. Even though I have had years of woodworking and plenty of tools, I am floored by the skills of the people sending photos in of there work to this site!!!! Time relates to skill and talent. Skill and talent relates to time spent. A properly planned project will always take less time.
Jim S

 

[Don Wade]

All pens that you make are custom pens

In life, there are no mistakes.

Miles Davis

 

[BSea]

I agree with Mike (IDP Mr). Another person to contact iswatch_art aka Shawn Newton. Here's been turning for less than a year & has done about 100 pens . . . . . . all custom. In fact he's working on his 1st component set pen today.