Making a quill pen from a feather and a biro pen is quick and easy to do, and also much more cost effective than buying a ready made quill pen.
All you need to make your quill pen is…
Some large feathers, one for each pen. You will find packets of feathers in most craft shops. They usually have both dyed feathers in vibrant colours as well as natural looking feathers. Choose feathers with quite a big shaft, because this has to be big enough to house the biro.
You also will been a biro pen for each quill and you will need a bamboo skewer to use as a tool.
First take a feather and cut off the end of the shaft at the writing end. The cut needs to expose the hollow cross section of the feather, and be a large enough hole to slot the bamboo skewer up. Push the skewer up inside the feather as far as you can, and then pull it back out again.
Next take the biro pen, and take it to pieces. All you need is the plastic tube part that holds the ink and the nib. Discard the casing of the pen.
If you take a look at the plastic tubing on the pen, its probably not filled to the end with ink. Snip of the surplus tubing so the plastic is just a couple of centimetres away for the ink line.
Push the ink filled plastic tub up into the feather so that only the nib of the pen is showing; the rest of the biro should be in the feather shaft. If you can not push the pen up into the feather this far, you need to repeat the procedure with the bamboo skewer and try to push it in deeper.
Once you are happy that the biro is snug inside the feather, you can add a small amount of glue just to keep it securely in place. You quill pen is now ready to use, However, you could make the pen more glamorous buy tying a ribbon around the shaft or maybe you could add some glitter to the feather.
Quill pens make a great gift for people who like writing and can be given in a long slender box, or can be given with a notebook or diary.
