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How to Make a Writing Quill

Introduction: How to Make a Writing Quill

For more than a thousand years, the feather quill was the dominant writing utensil of the Western world.
There are many artists, prop-makers, and enthusiasts today who still use quills and have learned to
create their own. The process isn't difficult; it does, however, require a bit of practice to produce an
instrument that will allow you to write efficiently and without blotting your page with ink.

I would recommend creating several quills at a time to both take advantage of the extended time
required for some steps, and to allow yourself to try the steps several times over.

For this project, you'll need:

-several feathers, 8"+ in length
-fine sand
-an empty tin can
-a conventional oven
-scissors
-an Xacto knife, or other sharp knife
-ink
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Step 1: Choosing a Feather

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When looking for feathers for your quill, keep a few things in mind. Firstly, your ideal feather has a
shaft of around a quarter of an inch thick, or more. A smaller diameter will make the writing instrument
more difficult to hold. Look for feathers that have a good length of calamus, the translucent tube at the
writing end of the quill. A longer calamus means that you will be able to resharpen and continue to use
your quill for some time without running out of feather. In some feathers, particularly those bought in
hobby shops, the calamus can be crushed by the packaging or cleaning process; these feathers can't be
used as quills. When shopping around for feathers, try to select packages with as few crushed feathers as
you can.

I chose plain, white turkey feathers for my project. They came three in a bag for about a dollar at
Michael's.
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Step 2: Preparing Your Quill Before Tempering

Before you temper your quill's writing shaft (more on that in just a moment), consider prepping the
feather into a more pleasing and useful shape.

The first image here is of the three quills I made in this run before I shaped them for the most part. You
can see that one of them has already been shaped and used for writing without tempering it first. The
untempered quill didn't perform nearly as well as the tempered quills, and it's a step I won't skip again.

In the second image, we have (from left to right):

1) The "afterfeathers" removed and part of the vane stripped away to begin higher on the feather. They
can be plucked away for the most part, though I did utilize my Xacto knife. The purpose here is to get
much of the feather out of the way of your hand when writing.

2) The flaky scaling on the calamus and the remnants of the barbs have been sanded away; I used a
medium-fine sandpaper, though the back of your knife works fairly well. This cleans up the outside of
the shaft and makes shaping it easier later on.

3. The vanes of the last feather have been trimmed away to shape the overall look of the pen. This final
step is purely aesthetic. Though it was common to remove most of the vane for practicality's sake, your
quill can ultimately look however you wish it.
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Step 3: Acquiring Sand for Tempering

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To temper the quill, you will need some fine grain sand, a tin can to contain it, and an oven in which to
heat it. You have several options here, the easiest of which is to buy sand at the hobby shop when you
purchase your feathers. However, if you've already made your trip to the store, or are attempting to
spend as little money as possible on this project, there's another answer. If you have a sandy pit or play
area nearby and already own a sifter, you always have the option to go sift your own sand. I chose to do
this, and I do have some tips for the process.

1) Firstly, begin your quest with the knowledge that you are about to render your sifter useless for
kitchen prep. I imagine that with persistence, you would be able to remove most if not all of the sand
from the sifter. That's not a chance I'm going to take, especially as I don't use the thing that often
anyway.

2) Take your empty tin can with you to wherever it is you're gathering sand. It provides both a means of
carrying and measuring the sand; why sift more than you need?

3) When choosing a patch of sand to scoop from, try not to dig too deep; the moister the sand, the more
difficult the sifting will be. (In addition, because we had gotten some rain in our area as I was tackling
this project, I ended up having to bake my sand in the oven to dry it out quickly. It was as simple as
spreading it out on parchment paper on a baking sheet and putting it in the oven until it had preheated to
the required temperature. I then sifted it another time or two to remove the larger particles that had
slipped through. If you use this method, be aware that your sand will be very hot! Use caution when
handling it.)

4) If you have a crank sifter, do not use the crank or turning mechanism in your sifter. As tempting as it
may be, it doesn't make the job any easier; it only succeeds in jamming up with sand. Far easier was
simply scooping up sand with it and shaking it over my tin can until the can was full. Don't forget to
dump out the large particles between scoops!
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Step 4: Tempering the Shaft

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Now that your feathers are prepped and you have your sand, it's time to learn about tempering.
Tempering a quill refers to using heat, typically in the form of hot sand, to increase the strength and
brittleness of the shaft by removing moisture from it. The nib that you carve from a tempered shaft will
deform much less quickly than an untempered nib.

To temper your feather, begin by putting your tin can of sand in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for
15-20 minutes. I set mine on top of the baking sheet and parchment paper I had previously used for
baking the residual moisture out of my sand. When your sand is ready to come out of the oven, you can
stick the shafts of your prepared feathers as far into the sand as they will fit. Here they will stay until the
sand cools to a safe temperature.

In my experience, it took about an hour and a half for this step. Because of the extended time taken here,
I prefer to temper three or four quills at a time. You should be able to see a clear difference between the
coloration of a tempered and an untempered calamus. While I don't have a picture of the latter, you can
see that the tempered shaft is more opaque than before, and it will bend less in the hand.

A variation upon this tempering process involves soaking the feather for a day before placing it in hot
sand. I haven't personally tried this, but I've heard that it allows the shaft to maintain some of its
flexibility while still improving its tolerance to wear.
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Step 5: Shaping the Nib

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Using an Xacto knife (or similar, VERY sharp blade), slice the end of the shaft at a 45 degree angle on
the "underside" of the pen as it would sit in your hand. There will be more shaping to be done, but for
now, you've opened up the inside of the calamus for cleaning. Using a thin tool such as a toothpick,
clean out the matter from the inside of the shaft. This will help prevent gobs of ink from getting caught
in the membranes inside the pen. Be gentle with the shaft at this time; it doesn't take much force to split
the calamus in places you didn't intend.

After the membranes have been cleaned out, you're ready to start shaping the nib. I have found the best
way to do this is to observe fountain pen nibs and try to emulate their design. Depending on what you
wish to use the quill for, you may desire a wider nib or a narrow one. Experiment with different shapes
and find the one that suits you.

Begin by "slitting" your ink reservoir into the end of the pen. To do this, lay the shaft with it's
"underside" (the opening created when you cut it at an angle) facing upwards. Using the tip of your
knife, press into the middle of the shaft until it splits down the center to the tip of the nib. Once your
reservoir has been cut, you're ready to move forward.

The third picture is of the shape I typically aim for when I cut nibs; using the reservoir slit as my center
line, I aim to make the nib symmetrical. The primary goal is to provide a narrow writing point, although
there are characteristics which make some shapes more useful than others. By slicing in again and
narrowing the tip, you encourage the ink to stay in the top of the pen instead of pooling at the writing
point. This is possible because of the surface tension of ink; it has a tendency to remain in the curved
tube of the shaft rather than on the flat underside of the nib.

UPDATE 4-30: I added a couple of pictures to try and give you a better idea of the shape of the nib. This
is several sharpenings later; you can see the pen has been used for writing and subsequently cleaned out.
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Step 6: Bonus Step: Boosting Your Reservoir

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A trick of the trade used as a means for extending your charge of ink, some quill makers will take a barb
or two from their feather and insert it into the end of their quill. This small bit of feather allows the quill
to hold a greater charge of ink, allowing you to go longer without dipping your pen. While not
necessary, I've found this greatly increases the amount of writing I can do on a single dip.

1. Begin by selecting a barb of around an inch in length

2. Make a 'U' shape out of the barb; it will probably crease or bend in the middle, and this is okay.

3. Poke the loop, open side first, into the end of the quill, lining it up with the ink reservoir. One "leg" of
the u-shaped barb should be laying along the slit of the reservoir. Using a tool like a toothpick, prod the
barb further into the calamus so that the ink collected in the barb doesn't drag against the paper while
you write.

I typically replace this small loop every time I clean out my pen for simplicity's sake. It can be
recovered during the cleaning, but as I have an entire vane full of replacements, I don't worry too much
about it.
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Step 7: That's All She Wrote

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And there it is! You've made a quill! All that's left is to dip it in some ink and take it for a spin.

Some final notes on using your new quill:

 I get more use out of my own quills when I clean them after using them; allowing the ink to
build up keeps you from getting a good charge. To clean India ink out of a quill, I just run it
under the tap and use my fingers to clean the outside. To get the ink on the inside, I trim away
half of the cotton on a Q-tip and moisten it before swabbing the inside of the shaft with it. If you
have a shaft larger in diameter, you may not need to trim the Q-tip, but mine are typically narrow
enough that doing so would likely crack the shaft.

 Is your quill getting dull? No worries! Just sharpen it like you did when you first cut it!

 If you remember how to write in cursive, I would highly recommend it, as it was developed for a
time when we wrote with quills. Because you pick the pen up from the paper less often, you'll
find that less ink is wasted when you write in cursive. In addition, the smoother movement will
cause less ink to be splattered on the page.

 You will probably get ink everywhere. Just a head's up.

 Don't want to go buy ink from a hobby shop? No worries; you can make your own. All you need
is charcoal powder/dust and a little bit of rubbing alcohol. Mix well and write to your heart's
content.
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Make a Real Feather Writing Quill

Introduction: Make a Real Feather Writing Quill

Making a quill from a feather is not very hard, doesn't require a lot of tools, and can be a lot of fun. My
first attempt wrote fairly well, and my third or forth was quite nice. Disclaimer: I am not an expert, there
are other ways, probably even better ways, to make a quill than this. However this works for me and you
might find it helpful.

Here's what you'll need:

A soup can
Some fine sand
A very sharp knife with a small blade
Some feathers
Calligraphy Ink

You can get everything you need but the soup can at most craft stores. I went to Micheal's Art's and
Crafts and got the feathers, sand and hobby knife for a few bucks.

For the knife I used an Xacto hobby knife. Calligraphers use all different sorts of knives as their pen
knives but the main requirement is that it be fairly short and VERY sharp.
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Feathers. Most hobby stores sell turkey feathers. I got mine in a four pack for 2 dollars. You want them
to be long, and check that the tips aren't crushed. Sometimes they are dyed different colors, this is fine.

I found pouches of fine sand at the craft store as well, I think they are for miniatures.

Step 1: Preparing the Feather

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At this step you need to decide what you want your quill to look like.

Historically, writing quills had some or all of the barbs removed from the shaft. A fully barbed quill is
really a Hollywood invention. For practical reasons most quills had all of the barbs removed and the
skinny end of the shaft cut off. This left something about the size of a modern writing pen that sat well
in the hand. Some people used quills that used the whole shaft of the feather but retained the barbs on
the end. This was really a matter of preference. I like to make this style, as I like how they look.

First you want to use your knife to shave off all of the barbs you don't want. You'll want to remove at
least enough so that you can comfortably hold the quill without the barbs getting in your way. If you are
making a barbless quill then just cut them all off and chop of the excess shaft.

Next, use the back of your knife or your fingernail to scrape all of the extra scale off the end of the quill
that will become the tip. You want this to be smooth and even.

Now cut off the very tip of the quill, just the solid round end. Then use a long thin pokey thing (like a
straightened paper clip) to clean out all of the dried membrane material from inside the shaft.

Step 2: Tempering the Quill

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In order to keep a nice sharp tip, quills need to be tempered to harden them. One way is to leave them in
a drawer for around 3 years or so, but that takes too long. Another is to temper them in hot sand. This
will remove all of the extra oils in the quill and harden it.

Fill and empty soup can with fine sand, then heat it in the oven at 350 degrees for around 15 minutes.
Then carefully remove the can (it's hot!) and thrust your quills into the hot sand as far as they'll go. Now
wait till the sand cools off. Your quills should now be tempered.

Step 3: Cutting the Tip

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This is probably the hardest part. Don't be discouraged if your first attempt isn't perfect. Feathers are
cheap and a little practice will make for a good tip.

The first cut I make is fairly straight cut from the top of the barrel at about a 45 degree angle, this
determines the end. Next a make a long shallow cut on the bottom. The shallow cut should not reach the
other side, you want it to run out straight to the end.

Next you make the third cut, about halfway down the second cut in the bottom. This third cut will
roughly shape the tip. After that you make the channel split. The channel will help hold the ink and
guide it to the tip. It should be straight and about the same same length as the second cut. Try to get it as
close to the center of the tip as possible.

Finally you finish the tip by carefully trimming the tines on either side of the split so that they smoothly
curve to the tip, then trim of the tiniest bit of the tip to square it off neatly.
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Step 4: Writing With Ye Olde Quill Pen!

Dip the end in a little calligraphy ink and go to town! When writing with a quill it's a good idea to have
your paper angled a bit, as wring straight down on the paper can cause all the ink to run out at once. I
make no claims about being a calligrapher so I will leave those instructions to those better suited.
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Cutting Quill Pens from Feathers

This is a document written in flux. I'm still experimenting even as we speak (1 June 1999), and as I
figure more things out, they will be reflected on this page. Quite a lot of this material is an attempt at
reconciling conflicting reports on how to cut a quill. People are of many opinions, but the material's the
real test. This is just another account of experience and materials.

This is a page about how to cut feathers into useful quill pens. It attempts to go into most of the tradeoffs
and possibilities that are possible with one of the most flexible writing instruments ever made. A
practical guide to making feathers into something that writes.

I won't say that if you follow The Instructions Here that you'll get a working pen to your liking, half the
battle is really knowing what you like. The other half is getting a feel for how your knife goes into the
feathers of your choice and how the various things I'm going to talk about will affect what you really
want to do. I will say up front that it's probably going to take a number of tries, it won't be perfect the
first time, but with practice it can be really statisfying.

I'm going to cover equipment, prep, cutting, and then re-cutting of nibs in this page.

Equipment
This is the stuff I use to cut quills.
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1. Feathers

First, a bit about feathers. How many people have actually held out the wing of a very large dead bird,
measured the three or four longest feathers and pulled them out? Any takers? I know I have never seen a
dead goose or turkey wing with feathers still on it. So the old adage about taking the longest three
feathers off the wing is all very good when you're Thomas Jefferson and can raise your own geese
simply for their quills; but for us modern types there is a much simpler way to gather feathers.

I buy my feathers from local Hobby Lobby, Ben Franklin, or even Michael's; and whatever hobby shop
that's filled with odd baskets, dried flowers, leather lacing, candles galore, and beads is the place to hunt
down feathers. I've seen these kinds of shops all over the Seattle area, the San Diego area and the
Denver area, so I'm assuming that they're accessible from all over the U.S.. I have no clue what
international equivalents are, but would be glad to list them here if someone tells me.

Usually they have bags of 'Indian Feathers' (made in China or Taiwan or whatever) with about six
feathers for about a buck and a quarter, so they're about a quarter apiece for usable quill feathers. The
usable ones don't have a crushed tube and do have a significant portion of nearly transparent tubing
underneath the plume of the feather. I've actually had some bad luck finding a majority of usable
feathers in the packets at Michael's, so try the others if you can, first.

Above is a picture with one of the average feathers I've found by a ruler so you have some idea of
minimum length and tube thickness. I usually go for almost a foot long feathers and the tube is usually
3/16 to a 1/4 inch thick. I don't like using stuff that's much smaller than this. Tales of raven feathers and
the like being usable are true, but these are a good, standard, cheap starting place. Next to it is one of the
feathers with a crushed tube, and you can also see that the tube is significantly smaller than the regular
feather.
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2. The Knife

Above the crushed tube is my knife. It's a Benchmade 875 with the blue titanium liners that Trip gave to
me for a birthday. It's the knife I use for pretty much all my quill cutting. It's got a 3.75 inch ATS-34
blade of 59-61 HRC hardness with a .12 inch thickness and a plain edge, no sawtooth. It fits my hand
well and, surprisingly, does the fine detailed work very easily. The edge is magnificent and cuts very
nicely without any slippage or misses.

I also bought one of the 330's, because I wanted something small, but it just doesn't have the stability the
bigger knife has, the only differences are that it's .8 inches thick and far shorter. So I have no idea why it
doesn't cut raw quill material as well. It does cut, but my control isn't as good with the smaller blade and
with all the microscopic adjustments I like to make, I prefer using the larger knife. The 875 goes through
the stuff easily, the 330 makes it a bit more work. I have some hope that the tempered tubes may make
the 330 more useful.

I have used a little, tiny Swiss Army pen knife (funny how pen knives are good for cutting pens), you
know, those tiny pocket knifes with a toothpick and tweezers that always get lost? I sharpened it with a
diamond knife sharpening stone, and it's good for getting the membrane out. It even has a built-in
scissors to start the shaping of the tines and to finish the tip with, so it's actually a fairly good thing to
use if it can be sharpened enough to cut neatly. It is harder to use than either of the above knives;
however, it is significantly cheaper.

The knife should be clean, extra sharp to prevent slippage and accidents, and have a flat, none-edged
back near the handle for scraping certain bits clean. I'm fairly sure that even a good kitchen knife should
be able to do the job, but make sure that it has smooth edges, not serrated. A XACTO knife, straight
razor, or a scapel can also work; but they're all much harder to control because of the lack of control
surface.

They say that in the old days, folks kept a penknife solely for the usage of cutting quills, and that it was
kept wicked sharp and never used for anything else, even scraping parchment to erase a mistake. Some
say that the curved tip is shaped to make cutting the curved edges of the tines more easily, but I've never
used anything but the base of the edge because I've found the tube material too tough to just press and
cut, I've mostly had to just carve the tips into the right shape.

3. Other Stuff

The other two items are make the process much easier. I use the tweezers for pulling the dried
membrane out of the center of the feather, and I use the scissors both to shape the nib and to finish the
very tip. For the initial shaping, to make sure that I don't completely mess up the tines by pushing really
hard on them with a knife, I have to have a pair of very sharp sewing scissors to snip away the worst of
the extra material on either side of the tip.

Resharpening doesn't really need either of these additional tools, as the knife tip can take a bit of
membrane out of the center and the knife edge is very good for doing the relatively small amount of
material removal needed to just reshape the tip, rather than re-cutting it from scratch.
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Preparation
Preparation is not totally necessary, you can just go and cut the tube of the feather without either of these
techniques as outlined in the cutting area. But tempering will give the nib a longer usage life as well as
certain properties that dictate how you can cut the pen further down the tube. It is also a fun and weird
experiment in materials science. The stripping portion simply gives a more usable shaft that also looks
good and is easier on the hand.

1. Tempering

Tempering gives the tube resilience and toughness. There are two paths that I've gone down with this
technique and the two of them give different results and different material strengths. They also alter
cutting technique on the tube, and I'll outline the difference for the different tubes when I get down
there.

Both methods involve putting a can full of sand into a toaster oven (or regular oven) at 350 degrees
Fahrenheit for about fifteen to twenty minutes and then pushing the shaft of the feather as far into it as it
will go. I presently use a soup can filled with sand, as that will cover all the bare area of the feather
shaft. I leave it in until the sand gets cold. I used to use a tuna can, the idea is the same, the full, sixteen
ounce cans allow me to do this just once, instead of once for the tip and once further up when I get that
far up with the cutting.

The methods of splitting and cutting that I first outline are for a shaft that has been just heat treated. And
what happens is that the transparent tube goes opaque from the heat and it gets both harder and more
brittle, so that the splitting technique outlined below works really well and the point stays around for a
good four to six pages. The top shaft, below, has been just heat treated, and the bottom one is how it
looks before it's been treated at all. The tube should shrink a little, feel more solid than the untreated
tube. It also allows recutting by simply splitting the split a bit further and recutting the tip.
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The second technique for tempering involves *first* soaking the bare shaft in water overnight. The
transparent tube goes opaque with the soaking. Then stick it in the hot sand, and it will go transparent
again after the long heat treatment in the hot sand. The tube from this treatment will be just as tough as
the just-heat treated tube, but it will be less brittle and more flexible. It also becomes nearly impossible
to split in the normal order of cutting.

This actually lines up with historic data that indicates that only four or five good points could be gotten
from a quill, as without being able to just further the split, the split has to be restarted *opposite* the
original tip. So re-tipping this kind of tube has an entirely different set of steps once the original split has
been used up.

The flexibility of the tube, though, after both water and heat treatment is marvelous for writing, and the
tube material seems to take as long to wear as with the more brittle just heat treated hardness without
sacrificing flexibility. It's a trade off in many ways. The one thing is that with the heat-only method, I've
had a fairly significant number of tube just shatter when I tried to cut them. That might more than make
up for the length of tube that gets cut for points on the more reslient tube.

There are a few other methods of tempering that I've heard of or tried and discarded. One is putting a
can of sand on a burner on the stove, and that's one that I haven't tried or wanted to try or even feel
there's a need to try. As the person who does do this regularly says that it's imperative to watch the
feathers so that they don't burn. It seems non-useful and more dangerous than I need. The tempering
that's done just in the hot sand *out* of the heat source seems to be plenty and there's no risk of burns or
burning the tubes. I've also avoided fire, ashes, and direct applications of fire or heat sources.

I have tried tempering nibs after they've been cut, but every single one had the tines split further from
each other, rendering the tip pretty much non-functioning. Another I've tried is using a hair dryer, but the
heat isn't even enough and the tube shrinks unevenly. Not a good thing.
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2. Stripping

There are a number of ways to strip your feathers. This is mostly the removal of the plume to get it out
of the way of the writer's hand. The bare minimum is to strip off the lowest barbs and as much as is
necessary to clear a space for the hand. Just use the edge of the knife and carefully scrape the bits of
plume away until the shaft underneath is smooth.

There's a cool company that makes quills for Pendemonium that I would actually recommend. They do a
stripped Elizabethen/Shakespearian quill that is a marvel of construction. The problem with the ones I
recieved, though, were fairly minor, but I had to fix them a little to get them to really write without
splattering ink everywhere. I had to broaden the tip just a bit. They weren't tempered as much as I
temper mine, which may not have been an oversight as what they did is adequate for one time use; and
they'd actually cut the tip the wrong way for the way the feather curved. At least for how I'm
comfortable holding, using and writing with a quill. The slit, however, was really nice, and the curvature
was a very good thing to study of how they'd cut the tines. The beauty of them, though, was in the
stripping of some really strong feathers. They'd taken one side completely off. The other side has this
magical cut edge that's very smooth and strong. Every time I cut the plume just away from the shaft, I
can never get it that smooth. I would definitely recommend these quills if you really don't want to cut
them yourself, and at $10 for two, it's cheap compared to anything else I've seen.

I also did a thing where I left the narrow edge and just used scissors to cut along the line of the rib to
take off the majority of the larger plume, just to get it out of the way. I've also just stripped of all of the
larger half of the plume, it's clean and neat. It is easier to cut from the tip of the feather towards the
root/nib end using scissors. It is easier to go the other way when using a knife to strip it clean. The
picture shows the minimum in the middle, the commercial prep on top, and then my ragged utility quill
on the bottom.

Where the plume starts has a vein that runs a channel into the tube, so nearly everything in the area
where the plume starts is unusable for nib work and pens. So it doesn't really matter too much if it gets
scarred or if it even gets cut off. So long as the remaining length is comfortable for your hand.
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Cutting the First Nib

My main emphasis is on very fine tipped quill pens, things that I can use to write four or five lines of
text at a time. With tempering, they can last for several pages per sharpening as well. The main order is
make the slit first, then shape the two tines to meet where the slit is. For those that want the reslience of
soak-then-heat read this first. For the rest of you this is what I do:

1. Find pen orientation -- Hold the feather is you would a pen. I've found that the best thing is to
follow the curve so that the point curves down instead of up. When it curves up and there's a
bead of ink under the nib, if the angle is too low, the bead can touch the paper and spread
everywhere. Also, the shape of the quill under the plume may affect how easy it is to hold. So
figure out where the top of the pen should be.

It will actually work with the opposite curve, it's just a bit more awkward to get it to work easily,
sometimes, though some folks like the way the tube curves through their grip the other way, so
it's worth trying.

2. Cut to set-up Slitting -- This is an entirely non-intuitive cut. But, starting from the top, if you're
holding the point away from you, cut a steep angled cut away from you. Try and make this as
centered as possible on where you want the top to be. This should cut all the way through the
tube and should be less than forty-five degrees steep. Yes, you're making exactly the opposite cut
you would if you were going to make the tip in one cut and slit it. The picture may help. I've
marked the 'top' of this feather with a black marker and show the angle of the cut. It is the bottom
of the two shafts.
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3. Open the Tube -- A shallow cut along the bottom, centered against the top, it should be fairly
long and can be nicely curved so that by the time you get to the tip, you should be cutting off
about half the width of the tube in a nice, level line. It's to open the tube up for the next steps.

It should look like the top tube in the picture above.

4. Making the Slit -- This is the tricky bit. Take the two 'horns' that are shaped by the intersection
of the small cut and the big cut and fold them together and press that part of the tube flat. You
should hear a snap and a split should appear between the 'horns'. Try not to make it too long a
slit, that is, don't fold the opened section of tube too far away from the tip. You want something
that's only a quarter of an inch long, but if it's longer, don't worry. It's easy to just cut that
shallow cut further to accomidate the slit length.

An alternate and even trickier procedure for making the slit is, before you open the tube, put the
tip of the knife into the small hole made by the initial cut and lever the knife to make a very little
slit in the bottom of that initial round. A good picture for this bit can be seen at this U.K.
recreation page, on step three of their process. I've never been able to do this without cutting an
inch-long gash in the length of the tube in crazy directions. It may just take practice, but I've also
never had a knife-cut split work as well as a split that used the nature of the tube material to
make a clean split.

Museum back up to my method appears on the backs of some pen knives in the shape of a peg
that the tip was pressed against in order to make and lengthen the slit by splitting the tube
material further.

5. Shaping the Nib -- There is a tradeoff of angles and strength and how long the nib's tip will last.
The answer to the problem is in the curved shape. This is part of why most fountain pen nibs are
shaped the way they are, to give strength at the base, strength used to stablize the whole nib and
keep the slit together, and flexibility and narrowness at the tip of the tines to provide a narrow
writing point.

If the nib is too wide, it'll dull quickly. If the nib is too narrow, it'll flick ink everywhere and wear
down very quickly. So I shape each tine wide at the base, narrow at the tip with my scissors (so I
don't push too hard at the initial tine and snap it off by using a knife) and then carve away,
slowly, with a knife to make the curve as shown in the center. The one on the left is cut with too
narrow a tip and is the commercial one that flicks ink in all directions. The tip on the right is cut
too widely and is actually just a tip that I've done the scissors work to but not carved to shape,
yet.
 45

The tines don't have to be identical. I've had a few slits slide to one side on me when split, and
I've had one tine larger than the other, but things still worked. I tried to correct on the next
cutting and that helped significantly. One thing to be sure of, though, is that both sides end up
with material that will hit the paper on either side of the slit.

The other function of the shape of the nib is for ink flow. The tip needs to be flat, whereas the
part of the quill that holds ink needs to be rounded to make best usage of ink's surface tension
abilities. If the curve and surface area extends too far down the tip, the ink will flow too quickly
to the tip, ending up in blobby writing and a tendency for the tip to drop a lot of ink at once. The
picture below shows the shape of the shaped nib from the side. This is the other why as to why
the material is carved away from the sides.
 46

I also try to shape the nib so that the tip meets up right, i.e. both tine tips meet at exactly the
same spot on the central slit. This takes some really fine shaving at the end of the shaping and a
lot of looking at the result to see if it actually ends up right. With practice, it gets easier to see
and easier to judge. In the beginning, though, I had to ink a lot of useless tips before I could
figure out the really tiny bits of adjusting that needed to be done to get it to really work.

6. Finishing the Tip -- I usually do the shaping of the tines to where they meet as exactly as
possible at the same point on the tip, which usually ends up being a needle-like tip, with small
curls of shavings still attached and when they pull off there's microscopic 'bits' on it still. To
remove the bits, I usually put just the very edge of the tip into the scissors and snip the loose or
unstable bits off, this is sometimes about the thickness of an eyelash.

The traditional way, though is to put the tip on some supporting surface, the easiest when I'm
holding knife in the right hand and pen in the left is my left index fingernail, and then use the
knife to cut off the last infintesmal bit. To make a thicker nib, cut off more. Medium, broad, and
even chisel points are easy, just cut them to that shape with the slit in the middle. As another step
with the boarder tips is scraping either the top or the bottom a bit to make a smoother tip for
writing. This is much like grinding smooth any metal tip, just faster.

This is really hard to get a picture of because the work is just so close and so microscopic. I
actually find it easier to do this without my contacts in because I'm severely nearsighted, to the
point where I have such a strong prescription for everyday use that my really close sight gets
affected when I have my lenses in. I can do a general shaping with my contacts in, but the
occassional troublesome point takes me taking out my contacts to actually figure out the
microscopic adjustment to get it right.

7. Testing Your Point -- The final step is to dip it into ink and try it out on some paper. Make sure
that you have good paper, cheap paper will take the amounts of ink that a quill puts down and
bleed the ink everywhere, even amounts of ink that shouldn't bleed and are normal for a quill.
Also, try to use a fairly light hand, it shouldn't be ridiculously light, but it shouldn't be three-
copies-through-carbon-paper heavy, either, as that's bound to split the tips. I've found, though, if
the tip is cut correctly and the nib is stable, someone with a pretty heavy hand can still write with
a well-cut quill.

Most usual problem at this point is that it's spilling ink in big blobs everywhere. This usually
means that the edges defining the tines weren't curved from the outside to the tip so that the tip
are could be flat for enough surface area. What usually happens is that they aren't cut curved, just
straight, so that there is curve to the tube as well as more width just behind the point. The width
allows more ink flow to the tip than the tip can actually handle, and the surface tension of the ink
clings to the curve until it touches down to the paper. Then blob. The fix is to cut the tip so that,
from the side it looks like the picture first up from here.

A less usual problem, but one that happens once one gets the idea to shape the tip thinly, is that
of flicking sprays of ink in some direction. Usually this means that the tip was shaped too thinly,
without enough support from the base of the tines. So slice just a bit off the tip, to allow it a bit
wider a base.

Finally, if it writes for four or five words and then quits, it's because the feed from the ink
reserve isn't working and either the split really isn't a split or the tines aren't meeting evenly on
the paper, and you might be writing with just one tine. I know it *looks* like it is, but it's
possible that the split slants through the material or something really small isn't quite lined up.
Look at it under a magnifying glass or just shave a bit off each side of the tip and re-cut your tip
and it may well work better. Another manifestation of this is when one tip is just barely off, and
 47

some letters might fade out as your write, but if you change the angle you're holding the pen at,
the writing comes back. One way to check the split is to see if ink gets in it when you've dipped
it and wiped the rest of it clean. The other, more dangerous way, is to use the knife edge to just
gently lift up on the split to see if the tips really do part. If you do this too far, the tips may never
come back together and you have to re-cut it anyway; but sometimes it can be a very useful way
to see if things are working.

Points about cutting -- The knife isn't a press and cut kind of deal, where the tip is pressed against the
tube material and it actually goes through. I usually carve, shaving off bits and curls from the outside in
along the tine shaping bits. The first two cuts are also nearly the same as whittling motions, where the
knife edge catches on the surface, then slices or carve through material. I do a lot of tiny, little carvings
at the end. The shallow cut and the steep cut at the beginning are quick and ruthless; but the shaping is a
very fine control thing.

For Soaked and Tempered Tubes -- The soaked and tempered tips need a slightly scrambled order, and
the only way to split the tube is by using your knife. So basically, it's do the set-up cut, make the knife
split, then open the tube to shape the tines, and finish by cutting the tip. With the more flexible material,
the knife split is actually easy to do. Back to cutting start.

Cutting Subsequent Nibs

For the just-heat treated tubes there are four steps to cutting the next nib after the first point is worn
down and it's good practice for getting the shape right on the tips. Basically, lengthen the split, lengthen
the open part of the tube, reshape the tines, and recut the tip.

1. Lengthen the Split -- First, if the split is longer than the length from the tip to the base of your
tines (i.e. the outmost flare of the tines), you may not have to do this at all, just go on to the next
step and just sharpen the point.

If you have to split it further just fold the two tines against each other, folding parallel to the
length of the tube and around the insides. There should be a snap and the split should be
lengthened. Try to keep the pressure as close to the point as possible, to keep the split length
relatively small.
 48

2. Lengthen the Open Tube -- The shallow cut along the bottom of the tip should be lengthened,
just dig the edge of the knife into the tube about as much further on as you've lengthened the slit,
and do the shallow cut again. Take about half the width of the tube off by the time you've hit the
corners of the old nib. If you haven't lengthened the split at all, just take off as much as you want
to take off the point, which may be as little as another shaving on either side, or may be as much
as cutting off both shoulders to the tines and reshaping them from that.
3. Reshape the Tines -- First, following the curvature of the previous nib, cut the sides again,
remembering to cut the curve so that the tip is flattened out sufficiently. I usually take the corners
off the outside of each tine and then shape up towards the tip from the new 'corner', trying to cut
in early and then smooth towards the tip.

4. Reshape the Tip -- Just as before, when the tines are shaped well enough, then shape the tip by
cutting off the tip even to either side of the slit.

For the soak and heat treated tubes, if you don't need to lengthen the split at all, just go through steps 2
through 4. If you have to make a longer slit, it's actually easier to slit the curved end of the shallow cut,
i.e. on the opposite side of the tube from the original point than to make a clean split by folding the tube.
The split is done as the original split was done, with the knife tip in the tube, but with the edge on the
opposite side, and using the leverage to crack what was once the curved edge on the lower side. So,
make the slit, then cut a new shallow tube opener opposite that slit, effectively taking off the entire old
nib, and then shape the tines to either side of the completely new nib and make the point as usual.

This will make the tube curve the other way in your hand; but it allows for a very clean, quick slit for
the new nib. Amusingly enough, this also lines up with some historic data that a large goose feather was
only good for four or five nibs before it should be thrown out. With the just-heat technique, I can get
nearly an infinite number of tips from it so long as I just keep lengthening the slit in a controlled
manner.
 49

The Quill Pen

There are many illustrations of scribes in medieval manuscripts and they all
convey an image of the simplicity of the scribe's kit. The quill pen was made
from easily acquired materials and required only the simplest of equipment,
basically a small sharp knife, in its manufacture. The quill and the knife
were the all purpose kit for production and maintenance.
The scribe first selected a feather. It didn't have to be a particularly exotic
variety, but a good strong flight feather from the wing of a robust bird
worked the best. Medieval re-enactors and people putting on plays please
note that there were not many ostriches running around northern Europe in
the middle ages.

It was usual to cut back the plume of the feather and remove the barb, or
feathery bits, from at least the underside of the central barrel of the feather.
Despite the loss of romantic affectation, this made it easier to write with and
it didn't scrape the scribe's hand. Most pictures of scribes show them holding
what looks like a narrow stick rather than something fluffy.

The structure of the quill was altered by standing it in hot sand for a period
of time. This actually strengthens the barrel of the feather and makes it more
flexible and less brittle. After it has slowly cooled the nib can be
constructed.

The small sharp knife was then used to make a sloping cut to remove the
point of the quill.

The quill was turned so that the cut away side faced up. The knife was
inserted into the hollow of the quill and a slit was made by carefully
levering the blade upward. I imagine that this is one of the trickier
manoeuvres.
 50

On the opposite side to the slit, a scoop was sliced from the barrel of the
quill.

The end of the quill now has a sloping aspect with a slit in the end, and is
starting to look a bit like a pen.

The nib was shaped by cutting away the corners on either side of the slit.

The nib was made neat and flat by scraping carefully on the inside.

It was sharpened by cutting at an angle from the outside.

The nib was then ready for use. As it broke or became worn, it could be
resharpened multiple times just using that handy little knife. Calligraphers
sometimes derive great satisfaction by examining ancient manuscripts to see
how many times the scribe sharpened his quill. It could vary enormously
and I guess the amount of work done between sharpenings just depended on
having a good feather to start with and on skillful construction of the pen.