Editing The Pen Addict 174/transcript (section)

== Jewelry Inspiration ==


'''Chris Manning:''' So one of the traditions in jewelry making for the past several thousand years has been taking inspirations from architecture and working them into jewelry. So I, I've continued that there's some great architecture out there and the stuff that we recognize and we love is withstood the test of time. And in, in the case of the overlays, that's all based on Gothic architecture. So if you take a look at all of that, it's, it's actually based on, uh, wooden frames from, um, or wooden, um, uh, panels from a house in Dresden, uh, that was built in the early 15th century and that's all relief work that was originally in that house. And so I've just taken that information and, you know, I've all those designs and I've distilled them down into something that works on a pen that, and that's the most challenging part of that designing is, is taking, taking those elements and, and working them into, uh, into something as small as a pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So how does the overlay process work? Right. I mean, I understand manufacturing pen barrel, right. But then how does the, how are you making essentially the, the silver, the metals part of it? I, I don't, I don't grasp this at all. It's all black magic, Brad. It's all black magic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And you can never learn.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've, I've, I've been around you in person and I don't doubt that. Yeah.

'''Chris Manning:''' Well, it's, yeah, it's, some of it is, some of it is close to black magic and sorcery. So that, that's using a technique that again is thousands of years old. It's a lost wax casting technique. So I start out with a wax barrel. And in my case, I'm using a computer controlled mill to machine that into a wax original. And every single pen, I have to make a new wax original. I, you lose, as the name suggests, lost wax casting. You lose the original wax. So every single one of those pens is unique and, and was made originally from, you know, that, that wax barrel. And then I do all the casting myself. And from there, I then, you know, do the cleanup, the polish and mount it on top of the acrylic barrel that I turned.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm, I'm shaking my head here, Myke. I, it's mind boggling what, what, what goes into this. How long does one pen take? I mean, I know you don't make them in ones. I'm sure you make, I think you make them like in batches of 10 is kind of how you're, you're

'''Chris Manning:''' set up. Well, I, so I, I make a limited edition of 10 of anything, 10 silver and one in gold, but I will only really ever make four or five pens at any one time. And, you know, something like those overlays, those are, those are pretty fast for me in terms of, you know, compared to some of my other pens. So that might take me two or three weeks to make one of those pens. Some of the more complicated ones might take me five or six weeks from start to finish.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's, that's really impressive. So are you doing this? Is, are you doing this full time? I mean, is this, is this Chris Manning?

'''Chris Manning:''' This is a full time job for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh yeah. This is a full time job for me. That's awesome. So how has your, your work been received? Like in the fountain pen community, I know we met in, in DC and you know, you've, have you done other pen shows or you, how are you getting the word out about silver hand and what's the feedback been like in the community?

'''Chris Manning:''' Feedback has been great. It's tough when you see these things online or when you see them in print, because it's, it's tough to get a sense of them, right? You know, from having picked them up, they're heavy pens, they're solid silver. And that's something that you just can't get with, you know, when you're looking at it on a, on a page. Right. So I've done the, the LA pen show a few times and the DC pen show a few times. And I guess the Toronto pen show, that's my local one. Gotcha. And, and so people, you know, again, when they see them in person, it's, you get a great reaction because the first thing that everybody says is, wow, this is a heavy pen. Um, but unlike a lot of the, the other big heavy pens that are out there, I made sure that it was something that you could write with. So a lot of people, I suspect when they buy these, they're going to, you know, they're going to collect them. They're going to stick them in a safe or whatever, but they are fully intended to be something that you can write with every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, I got the chance to use the Gothic overlay and to, to hold it. It was not nearly as heavy as I thought it would be. It's a very comfortable writing pen. I mean, it very much so like that one's reasonable.

'''Chris Manning:''' Yeah. I actually made one of the goals behind making that overlay was to make a pen that was a bit lighter than my other ones. If you look at something like the Jaipur or the, the, um, Taj Mahal pen, those are solid silver. So they, you know, they weigh three ounces and, you know, which is a heavy pen that, um, that overlay is a third of that weight. And so it's a little bit more reasonable for most people.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I got to hold the, the Jaipur for sure. And you pick that up and you're just like, wow, this is serious right here. This is what you, you know, you carry when you're walking down the alley at night, you know, just in case you need it. Well, you know, if somebody tries to steal it from you, it doubles up as a weapon. But it, it's stunningly beautiful. How does the pattern work on like the, the Jaipur and the Taj Mahal? Cause those are a little bit different layouts than the, the Gothic overlay. What is that? What are those patterns coming from and how are they getting onto the pen?

'''Chris Manning:''' So that was, uh, those designs came from a trip I made to India a few years ago. And, uh, the Jaipur was based on a marble pattern in the, the wall. It was in a, in this, uh, in the red temple in, uh, in Jaipur. And so I, I saw this great black and white, uh, marble pattern and grabbed, you know, grabbed a bunch of photos of it. And, um, and so that, that's how I, I came about that. The, the Taj Mahal one, as the name suggests, that's actually a, a textural element from the Taj Mahal. There's actually photos up on the, uh, on the site of the original, the original marble work that I got these from. And in the case of those pens, uh, those are again, machined out of a solid piece of wax and the designs are, are milled into the wax. And the black material that's in there is another metal that I inlay into the silver. It's actually a, another silver alloy called a Nielo. And it has a little bit of a copper, a little bit of silver, a little bit of lead and sulfur in it. And the sulfur makes it black all the way through. So that, that's not just a surface texture that's on there. That that's black the entire way through that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So now my mind's officially blown. I didn't understand how those pens were made. That's fascinating. I don't even know how you do this. I'm like, my jaws drop now. So what, what type of materials, I mean, all these are basically silver, right? But what other materials do you use? What kind of challenges do you have with these types of materials or their materials? You can't, that you've experimented with, you can't make a pen out of, um, you know, is there things that work, work best for certain situations? Talk about some of the materials you use on, on these pens.

'''Chris Manning:''' Yeah. So the base material that I'm using is always silver. And in this case, I'm using a particular silver alloy called Argentium. It's got a little bit of germanium in it, which makes it harder and it doesn't, uh, doesn't tarnish as quickly. And one of the reasons that I went to that was because it is harder. It's, it's more durable for this kind of thing. But the trick is, as you say, is finding other materials that work well with it. So things like the Nielo I use because it's got great contrast and it looks spectacular. It's also something that people don't use a lot anymore. It's been used for 6,000 years, but you don't get a lot of people, uh, working with it anymore. Uh, the acrylics, I've been starting to experiment a little bit. Uh, we'll talk about in a minute with some, some acrylics and some, um, antique gas or, um, celluloid things like that. Um, on top of that, I've also done work in, uh, enamel, which is a real nightmare to work in. Anytime you see real hard enamel, it's extremely challenging to make and to, to work with. Um, so that, you know, that's, there are always challenges with any of those, any of those new, uh, materials, but some things work well, some things don't. It just depends on, you know, on, on what, uh, on how it feels afterwards and whether it's, uh, uh, whether it's durable enough to, to hold up to being a pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So now this is a random question, but I've, I've been thinking, but do you monitor the ore prices in silver, gold, everything prices on the, on the market for when you're making purchases of, of this, because this is not cheap to get into.

'''Chris Manning:''' I mean, that's, is that a daily thing for you when, you know what, when you're buying, you know, I'm buying silver by the kilo. I don't, you know, and, and it's, it gets expensive. So when, when I see the price of silver, like today, it dropped down 58 cents of an ounce or whatever. That's when I start paying attention. It's, it's pretty cheap right now. Uh, as, as silver goes back in 2008, it was up at 48, $49 an ounce. Now it's down to 15. So it's, it's pretty reasonable, but. Yeah. It's, it's a real problem. And one of the reasons why I don't do more work in gold is just because it's astronomically expensive. Nobody wants to pay for that. Wow.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So let's talk about this new pen that, that you alluded to. Myke, what do you, what do you, what do you think about this? I sent you the link right before the show and we were both kind of ooh and an ah. So, so Chris has released, uh, some preview images of something he's working on, uh, just for this show. So I put that in the chat room. We'll have it in the show notes. So Myke, what are your first thoughts on this thing?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's stunning. And I don't, I can't work out what it's made of.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, so walk us, walk us through this, Chris, because I said the same thing. I'm, it was kind of jaw dropping. I mean, the, the work you do with the silver pens is it blows my mind because I just can't fathom all the work and time and effort that goes into something like that. It's so impressive. And then you drop this pen on us. What's this, does this pen have a name yet?