Meet Your Maker: Nic Pasquale, Pens by Pasquale

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Nic Pasquale collected knives first. The gift of a knife from his grandfather led him to the EDC universe, where he first saw the handmade pens people often carried with their knives. Put off by the prices, but drawn to the idea of working in wood, he watched woodworking videos, among which were videos about kit pens. He settled on cutting boards, bought a table saw and made one, and immediately sold the saw – it just wasn’t for him! For Christmas 2018 he got a wood lathe, and within a few months he had made his first kit pen.

When the lockdowns of early 2020 loomed, Pasquale and his fiancée eloped so they could be locked down together, and moved into an apartment where he was able to set up a small workshop. “We also got a dog... I had the time to work on learning to make kitless pens.” Jim Hinze and Tim Cullen gave him virtual shop tours and ongoing help and pointers for what to get and how to use it. He aspires to doing the kind of hand work that is Cullen’s trademark. “There is a lot to learn. I need to learn to walk before I learn to run. I’m working towards quad start threads done by hand on the lathe, instead of using taps and dies.”

Pasquale first burst onto the pen scene on Instagram with his unique clear pens with the colorful helix spirals in the material, which comes from Sawdust Designs. The material presented him with new challenges right away – “You have to get the helix to match up and go in the same direction on all three parts of the pen. And I’m trying to be the best I can at internal polishing.” He also got an unexpected pointer when Figboot On Pens did a favorable review of the pen, but mentioned that because the material is polished to perfect clarity, you could see the nib size letter written in Sharpie on the nib housing by Kirk Speer when tuning the nib. Now he removes the Sharpie before shipping a pen. “Regardless of how big or small someone is, I want them to get a top shelf pen.”

The helix material was just one of many that have become Pasquale’s favorite part of being a pen maker. “I’m a sucker for blanks. I make pens to fund my blank buying.” Finding something new, like the Oparex materials or vintage celluloids, is endless fun, and a mystery box from Stormwinds Blanks was being delivered to his door as we spoke. He has been making his own materials as well – “I wanted to try my hand at it, instead of sending an idea to a blank maker who is overwhelmed with work, and waiting several months – I can see it in a few hours.” He’s sold a few blanks to other makers but mostly casts for his own fun.

His latest project is a very small pocket pen called the Gnome. “How small can I make a pen? I took a #8 nib and put it in a tiny silly eyedropper pen. Azizah Asgarali of Gourmet Pens saw it on Instagram and I’ve done two runs of Gnomes for her shop. It’s smaller than a Kaweco Sport.” He also recently did a limited run of pens for Amarillo Stationery with a custom material.

For Pasquale, there is a favorite pen he already has, and a favorite pen he wants to acquire; neither is smaller than a Kaweco Sport. “At the Atlanta show I bought an amber Pilot Custom 823, it’s an amazing pen. It doesn’t have to be extravagant looking to be great.” (It has a broad nib; I made sure to ask.) The favorite pen he doesn’t have yet is a Newton Pens Prospector, with its triangular shape. As far as collecting, right now it’s ink. “If there is a series, I want to have the whole series.”

Although Pasquale has a master auto mechanic certificate, he quickly decided that it wasn’t his dream job. He currently is the general manager of a rollerskating rink in Nashville, where he used to skate as a kid. His mom runs the office. He’s a tough boss – he can’t attend any more pen shows this year because he has no more time off in which to do it. In 2025 he hopes to have tables at Atlanta and DC. Meanwhile, he and his wife are working on creating a website for his pen business, and he’s trying to build up some stock to have on the site when it launches. “I have trouble keeping up with collaborations, and commissions, and still having time for fun.” At the same time, working with commission customers is an enjoyable process. “I enjoy the back and forth, getting to know someone’s shape and color preferences.” He maintains bins of materials for his “regulars,” and will send them pictures of materials he gets in that they might like. “I can’t run too many commissions at once, though - I’m one guy and I want time to have this be my hobby too. I hope people will be patient with me – I’m trying to find the happy medium, looking out for myself and not being a people-pleaser all the time. Sometimes, it’s going to be ‘work,’ but I don’t want to hate going to the shop.”

One thing that keeps it all fresh is the company of other makers. There are a handful of makers within an hour’s drive of Nashville, and there is a Middle Tennessee Pen Turners meetup. The group is discussing trying to organize some kind of pen maker show in the Nashville area.

Besides the lofty goal of handmade quad start threading, Pasquale’s future plans include making clips. “I haven’t found a clip I like, most are brass plated like on kit pens, and they wear. I’ve been using Tim McKenzie’s stainless clips, but I want to learn to do it Tim Cullen’s way, by hand.” He also has a list of ideas for materials to make, and for possible combinations of existing materials. He’s working on refining his external polishing, and he’s added engraved cap coins. Longer term, he is interested in getting involved in the kind of work Shawn Newton does, in modification and rebuilding of pens by major makers. “I’m still trying to find my place, where I fit in, what my thing is – somewhere between more mass production, and the complete one-off approach.”

When asked about sources of inspiration, he almost sounds surprised by what he can do as a pen maker. “I’ve never felt artistic about anything. I have bad handwriting, I can’t draw, I’m even bad at video games. This is the one place where I can have an idea, and go out to the shop, and it comes out like I saw it in my head.”

Nic Pasquale’s work can be seen on his Instagram @pensbypasquale.

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Meet Your Maker: Terry Tourangeau, Hogtown Pens

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

It was 2021, and COVID lockdowns were still a thing. Terry Tourangeau, an architect and father of two small children, needed a creative outlet. “I could work from home but my wife was unable to, so my days were filled with meetings, childcare, and exhaustion. I was spending every spare moment I had on the couch, and realized I needed to make a change.” He had a lathe sitting in a box in his workshop, but hadn’t set it up yet. “I couldn’t take any classes because of the pandemic, so I was a little intimidated to do it without any instruction. They can be pretty dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, and I didn’t know where to start.”

During late night baby feedings, he watched videos about lathes. “A video of a guy named Mark Dreyer popped up in my feed one day. He had a really simple technique that made penmaking look easy.” While Tourangeau hadn’t set out to make pens, the seed had been planted from an unlikely source. “When I originally met my wife, I was ready to quit internet dating. I was literally about to delete my account, but she had sent me a smile. Before hitting the delete button, I told myself it'd be the last profile I read and then I'll shut it off. She had this one line – ‘I’m on a lifelong quest for the perfect clicky pen.’ It made me laugh and I thought, how could I not meet this person? So years later when I saw a guy making pens, I realized that maybe I could give the perfect clicky pen a shot.”

Tourangeau had been exposed to hobbies and workshops from a young age, having a mother who quilts and a father, Ray Tourangeau, who has a long list of Ward Foundation World Championships in wood carving under his belt. “I had this moment in the shop after I had made a few kit pens, where I realized I was the same age as my dad when he had won his first championship. It lit a bit of a fire in me to start thinking of what sort of things I could do with pens.”

Around that time, with kit pen making in full swing, Tourangeau attended the virtual Midwest Turners Pen Gathering where he saw a demonstration of kitless penmaking. “Reading about kitless pens online was intimidating, but the instructor made it look really accessible. So I bought a few blanks and some tools to give it a try. Just after the MPG I also discovered the As The Pen Turns podcast, and not only gained a lot of knowledge and insight but also realized there was a thriving community of makers and pen lovers on Instagram.” While Tourangeau hadn’t considered selling his work, it seemed like the next logical step. “I was already hooked, amassing materials and tools, so I wanted to offset those costs. It took me awhile to work up the confidence to do it. The details had to be right. I was self-conscious about selling – I look at what you can buy in the same price range that most maker pens fall into, like a Leonardo Momento Zero, and feel like I need to make something as good as that. It needs to compete with what else is in that price range.”

To stay at that level, he is always trying to improve the efficiency of his process and the technical quality of his pens. The schematics on the Hogtown website show an architect’s hand at work. “I put a lot of time into designing the shapes. The cigar shapes went through a lot of iterations to get just the right taper. It takes time to make them so that they are consistent every time, because I need it to look exactly like it’s supposed to. My pen shapes aren’t as distinctive as those of some makers, but I think some of them do stand out.” Polish is another area where Tourangeau has spent a lot of time refining his technique, and it’s paid off in praise from customers and other makers. “I check the polish with a bright light – if it’s done right, it reflects everything like a mirror.”

The Hogtown website says the pens are “Made with love (and a bit of swearing).” “The swearing happens when you thread a section for Jowo, and then look at your commission list and it’s supposed to be a Bock. Or when something explodes while turning, or you get to the end of a polish and realize you burned an edge and have to redo part of the pen. It’s all a part of the fun."

In contrast to the swear-worthy moments, trying new materials is a source of constant inspiration. “I call it shaking hands with the blank – I will cut the tenon and then polish it before threading, and it gives me the first peek at what to expect from the finished product. I’m always chasing that high of being blown away by the material.” Is there a temptation to cast pen materials? “Oh, yes – but I’m so consumed with the pen making, I don’t want it to take me away from the pens or from time with my family. I don’t have that much energy!” When there is enough blank left after making a pen, he will turn a little piece and install a magnet in it so it can be popped onto the customer’s refrigerator. With his kids now nearly 5 and 7, the papers are starting to come home from school. “I tried to come up with something that would hold at least 10 letter sheets on the fridge, because so many magnets can barely hold a single sheet.”

While he does not have a large pen collection – “I’ve got a lot of failed experiments that I use, and I’m always test driving my own” – he takes part in the annual ATPT Secret Santa and has a Mad Science Beta that he enjoys using. “It’s such a distinctive shape and style that you can’t get anywhere else – Jacob’s work really stands out as his own.”

Tourangeau has called Toronto home since 2005. His pen models are named after streets or neighborhoods with personal significance, and the name of his company is rooted in the city’s history. “Hogtown is a nickname that city owes – at least in part - to the stockyards of pork processing plants that existed downtown. The last one was only closed in 2014, which is pretty wild for a major metropolitan city. You’d see trucks stuck in downtown traffic with all of these snouts poking out the back, headed for the abattoir.”

The good reception his pens received meant that his commission queue is always full. While this is a nice problem to have, it does mean he doesn’t always have the time to explore new things. “I’d love to take the time to go back to my roots a bit, and just go into the shop with experimentation in mind – which is hard to do when you’re staring down an order list. I’ve extended my lead time to allow for more of that, but doing something new is always a little scary when you are confident in what you’re already doing.” It also means he has not been able to do shows, although he’d like to. “I’m always a bit worried about the prospect of shows – I’d have to essentially put everything on hold in order to make enough to fill a table, and I’m always afraid that at the end of the process I won’t want to make pens anymore!” Turning off commissions completely to make time is not very appealing, because he enjoys the personal side of the process “As penmakers we couldn’t really do what we do without an amazing community of customers and other makers to support us. One of my favorite parts of the process is seeing someone’s face light up when they see their pen for the first time, or getting some hilarious and enthusiastic DMs when I send them the first video of the polished pen. Giving them something they can love that much, for potentially the rest of their life, is really motivating.”

As things stand, that hour or two and the end of a day making pens is a source of calm. “When I do other kinds of woodworking, I finish the evening thinking, ‘What did I even get done today?’ The finished product is six weeks down the road, and your progress feels invisible. The great thing about penmaking is that I can go into the shop with an idea in my head, and leave with it in my hand. That’s really inspiring.”

Terry Tourangeau’s work can be seen on his Instagram @hogtownpens, and his website Hogtown Pens.

Meet Your Maker: Nathan Booth, 1836cc

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Nathan Booth had never heard of individual people hand-making pens, until the day in late 2016 when he and his wife took his mother-in-law out for a birthday lunch. When they asked her half-jokingly what she’d gotten for her birthday, she pulled out a pen that had been made for her by the principal at the school where she worked. It was a kit pen made of a wood/resin hybrid material, and it struck him as so cool that he began browsing YouTube for information about people making pens.

He joined a few Facebook groups for people learning to make pens, seeing both absolute beginners and people doing high-quality work, and it inspired him to look further. “I’ve always worked in manufacturing for the oil and gas industry, always been around machines, I’ve always been mechanically inclined – so I set out to figure it out on my own.” He asked his mother-in-law’s principal if he could come visit his shop to see what was involved, and soon bought a small lathe.

Kit pens came first, and after awhile Booth took his pens to a craft show where he set up a card table and made a few hundred dollars; the success caught him by surprise. Even after making the move to kitless pens, he’ll still make a kit pen occasionally because “not every customer is going to be a fountain pen enthusiast. And I don’t want to give up the side I started on.” He’s found that on Instagram, he reaches the fountain pen lovers, and on Facebook (where he’s not very active) he reaches more of the craft-show clientele, so the two social media outlets complement each other for him.

Instagram played a part in his decision to try kitless pens, in 2020 – “I wanted the challenge of what I saw on Instagram. I wonder if I can do this?” Like most pen makers, Booth found help from other makers when he needed it. Jim Hinze at Hinze Pens helped with information about tooling, and he also turned often to Jason Miller of Jason Neil Penworks and Braxton Frankenberry of Divine Pens Plus.

It didn’t take long for Booth to be lured into casting materials. “There is an art form to casting – you have only so much time to get it mixed, and it has to be at a certain temperature to keep the colors from bleeding together.” He casts just for himself, with only one pot, and doesn’t want to expand into producing resins for others because he doesn’t want it to become his primary product. With a full-time job and a family, he tries to keep his shop time every evening to just a couple of hours. Such a limitation also helps avoid wasting time and materials. “You get tired and start missing little things. You can be experienced and that cap will still sometimes blow out. I will stop for the night if I get frustrated because it will affect everything I do. A rough day at work can trickle down.”

Inspiration can come from the ability to quickly realize a color idea in a cast, as well as from customer requests. “During COVID, everyone was so busy because people were on Instagram buying pens – there were so many commissions and makers were meeting that demand.” He still maintains an “average size” commission list, because it keeps the business steady and because “if a customer wants to talk to me, I want to have the time.” The customers provide the feedback that keeps the process rewarding: “I made this, and it’s worth it to someone to buy it.”

When it became inevitable that he needed a company name, Booth drew on his love of his lifelong home state: Texas became independent of Mexico in 1836. The CC stands for Custom Creations, which besides pens can still include “fun things” like duck calls and holders for razors or cigars. His wife makes the sleeves that protect his pens in shipping.

With the surge of independent pen makers over the past several years, like all of them Booth has given thought to how to stand out. “How do you make something unique enough, but that you can replicate efficiently – if you can’t do that, you have to charge a lot more for it.” His flagship Three Wishes model came out of playing with shapes to find something striking, and ended up with a cap that made him think of a genie’s bottle. “Either people say it’s for them or it’s not – you either love it or hate it.”

One of the most unusual pens he’s made went beyond uniqueness of shape. An artist named Toni Street worked with polymer clay to make flowers and the comedy/tragedy theater mask faces, and applied them to very thin brass tubes before curing them at high temperature. Booth turned pieces of Jonathon Brooks’ Fubuki Koi material to fit inside the brass tubes, created the internal and external threading, and epoxied the sleeves inside the tubes, to make a pen that would both showcase the clay and keep the nib from drying out. He then added Fubuki Koi finials on cap and body, built a CA finish in layers over the pen, and polished it. The result was one of a kind for the person who commissioned it.

Pen shows are not currently on the agenda for Booth. “Mostly I’m not going to have the inventory. Maybe Dallas or Arkansas … but I’m not really ready to make that investment, I’m not there yet. There’s some impostor syndrome involved too – a fear that people won’t like the work.” Attending craft shows where he’s the only pen maker relieves some of that pressure to be different from every other table. And keeping the size of his business small helps him to stay fresh. “I don’t want to get burned out and not enjoy it anymore.”

Booth does not have a large pen collection. “I enjoy making pens for the artistic side of it, I have no great interest in the big brands.” His favorite pens come from other makers. He picked up a Dragonslayer pen from Ryan Krusac at the Dallas pen show that he finds constantly a marvel because, as he points out, “the art is designed flat, but on the pen there is no seam, it’s a continuous design.” He has a pen made by John Albert that he received at a secret Santa exchange held by the As The Pen Turns podcast, with silver art deco accents on a vintage resin. And when Dromgooles in Houston hosted Jonathon Brooks, he couldn’t walk away from a pen with resin of gold and brown with small bits of red. “If I buy a pen it’s because I really appreciate the work.”

Booth has thoughts for people who buy maker pens. “It’s not just my time, a piece of me is going into that pen, and time I could have spent on other things. If a pen is so perfect you can’t distinguish it from something machine made or injection molded – why bother?” “If you’re into this world you’re buying into, if you’re invested into the maker side, then if you have access to someone near you who does it – reach out and ask if you can come see and understand their process and make a pen. It’s beneficial for people to see what it takes to make a pen that’s done well. If someone reaches out to you as a maker asking for that – it’s a compliment.”

Nathan Booth’s work can be seen on Instagram at @1836cc.