Introducing a totally new concept of pen making kits.

The dns-Twister series.

These pen kits have been developed out of a desire to create totally wooden pens and pencils without the constraints of the standard pen kits mechanisms that have been available until now. Another consideration was that they could be made in any workshop with the most basic of tools without the need for special mandrels and the like.

It has taken a year of prototype development and consultation with SCHMIDT Technology one of the world's leading manufacturers of writing instruments.  A company specializing in the manufacture of precision writing systems whose customers include some of the most prestigious names in the luxury pen market. Porsche Design, Waterman, Dupont, Mont Blanc, Pelikan, Faber Castell, Cartier and Lamy are just some.

The results are probably some of the best engineered, high quality pen and pencil kits available for woodturners.

These kits differ in the fact that the maker is able to produce a pen that is wood from tip to cap without a middle metal band due to the precision of the functional parts of each kit. This has been achieved by the use of a metallic sandwich construction allowing a wall thickness of 0.2 mm and soft twist operation, meaning that the only limitations of the design of the finished pen is the imagination of the maker. As long as the length of the tip and body of the pen are 87.3mm the lengths of the tips can be varied from 18mm to 35mm and the diameter of the body can be from a minimum of 9mm to whatever is desired (within reason) The pen below which I use every day is 17mm at it's largest diameter and made from Burr Walnut and Castello Boxwood.

The mechanisms allow for almost unlimited variations in design. From a totally grain matched pen to the use of different materials for the tips and caps such as Corian, Beef Bone and even 40,000 year old Mammoth Ivory. Rings of contrasting woods or materials can be incorporated anywhere in the design. The pens above have Corian tips and cap, the one on the left is in Burr Walnut with an Ebony ring behind the cap and the one on the right is in Redheart with Ebony rings between the tip and the cap. Another plus point with these kits is that all the parts are available as spares so if any thing goes wrong you don't have to sacrifice the whole kit.

The dns-Ring-Clip is also ’Made in Germany’ and is pressed from high quality carbon steel, polished and plated with nickel. The high
level of stability and flexibility is achieved
by a special hardening process, called ’Bainitic' hardening. The movement commonly found in
the clip of regular pen kits, which marks the wooden
surface of the pen, is elegantly prevented by
an ’anti-twist‘ mechanism built into the
clip.

To buy either a Startset  or an individual pen kit go to the on-line shop.

The newly developed refill ’Easy Flow 9000’ was designed for all writing instruments with twist or click operation. Thanks to the excellent ’cap-off‘ time lids are not required as the ink flow starts instantly even after a long pause in writing thus you get writing which almost floats on the paper and that is regular, strong, precise and clean. This feature is often sought by demanding and discerning pen buyers. - This makes the ’easy Flow 9000’ an excellent choice to distance this premium class pen from all others and to satisfy the most demanding and challenging customer.

 The dns-Artists Sketch Pencil and the dns-Twister Graphite are two more of the kits available. The Twister Graphite looks exactly the same as the Twister pens but instead of the pen refill there is a transmission cartridge that holds 0.7 mm leads. With each twist of the cap approximately 2mm of lead is projected by the transmission. The Sketch pencil uses 3.2 mm leads and with each click 2 mm of lead is pushed out, there is an eraser in the top of the pencil under a protective cap. The tip on the sketch pencil is made out of solid polished stainless steel with a largest diameter of 13mm and it uses the same clip with the 'anti twist mechanism' as the pen kits. The main tube is brass and the actual mechanism is a mixture of stainless steel, brass and plastic. The engineering in these kits has to be seen to be believed.