Peekachello Art

I make pens and have given away quite a few, and sold some too. This is a care guide for them, since I use a fairly simple and renewable finish on them.

Any Parker Style refill should work in your pen when the initial ink runs out. And the pen SHOULD last you pretty much forever, but I’ve had one where the clicker stopped clicking. Bad part. Should that ever happen, let me know and I’ll fix it, though you’d have to mail it here for me to fix. But I plan to continue to have spare parts to repair the pens I've made.

If the finish gets dull (wear will tend to make it more smooth and glowy, but water will dull the finish and maybe make white splotches behind where the pen got wet), some high quality wax will generally spiff it right up. I use good quality carnauba wax, but any good car or furniture wax will work. Rub it on, generally running across the grain, then let it sit for at least a half hour, and buff it off with a clean rag.

Best results are when you get enough friction putting the wax on that it softens and can flow to fill the pores in the wood. But as I've done this at least once on your pen, it's not strictly needed unless you've stripped or sanded the finish off the pen.

If the pen gets really dinged up and you need to sand it, after sanding, apply a thin coat of tung oil* or a 50-50 blend with citrus oil, let it soak in for at least an hour and then wipe off any excess. Let the oil cure for a couple days to a week, followed by wax as described above. The only thing different I do from that when I’m making the pen is that I mix shellac with the oil for a little more gloss and a quicker cure, and put three or four coats of the mix on, buffing each out before applying the next coat.

* Use actual tung oil, not the Homer Formby Tung Oil Finish, which is an alkyd resin/soya oil VARNISH mixed 20% varnish with 80% mineral spirits, and not a drop of actual tung oil in it.