Exotic Wood Handcrafted Pens

The use of exotic woods and burls from places outside of North America has seen increased use by handcrafters and wood turners over the past few years. Every visit to the exotic lumber yard shows an increase in varieties available that were not available in the past. Many hardwoods coming to the market have unique qualities and some provide unique challenges to the fine pen crafter.

Hardwoods such as Ziricote and Jobillo have been available from Central America with some sense of regular availability. Other burls from trees long since dead from the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa had harder to come by as locating the remains of the once dense forests are much harder. Many locals use age old techniques to find these treasures and eventually get them to wood workers.

These and many other exotic woods from Europe, Southeast Asia and even Russia are beginning to make inroads into local pen crafting shops. Quality wood is always paramount and the wood worker may have to have his wood sent out for stabilization in order to provide consistency throughout the finished pen. Some woods are not even classified as wood, but rather palms and bamboo. Bamboo is interesting to work with as layers of the wood are glued and pressed together to form pen blanks. Palm species exhibit striations and eyes throughout that provide interesting character to the handcrafted writing instrument.

By no means are these exotics taking the place of standard North American species for pen makers, but they are making inroads. Still highly popular are the Quilted Poplars, Walnuts, Elms, Maples and Oaks still make fine writing pens. They are relatively inexpensive to obtain and the quality available is unbelievable.

Local wood workers and open crafters turn to African hardwoods such as Padauk, Zebrawood, Wenge, Blackwood and Ebony to produce exceptional pens. These additional sources also add to the amount of pens being made available to pen lovers all over. Wherever the source, pen crafters are inundated with ideas t hey can grow their businesses with.

With the addition of more and more exotic hardwoods, the pen crafter has decisions to make. What do they charge for their work? Are prices varied, or do they average prices to ensure continuity of their price lines? Having different prices for the same pens could force some customers to look elsewhere, but the savvy pen crafter can explain why their work is worth the extra cost. Sometimes it is as simple as less maintenance to retain the glossy finish.

Of course, not every customer will be happy with the selection, what they perceive the finish to be or the price of a handcrafted piece of work. It is very difficult to find a crafter with the willpower not to tell a customer that if they do not like their prices, to go buy the 99? pen at the big box store.

The value added price of time and effort must be accounted for and the handcrafter that does not take this into account and only prices by material cost alone, especially when dealing with expensive exotics will be shortly selling his/her stock at giveaway prices. It is more valuable from a business perspective to include the price and advertise the exotics as what they are - new hardwoods that command the premium price, at least for the time being.