I’ve made many slimline pens in the past two years, but I’ve always kept the best for my own “private collection”. Some of these can now be found on my Etsy shop.
If you’re a woodturning looking for slimline pen designs as inspiration for your own pens, these are some of the best wood & acrylic pens I’ve made on my small WEN Mini Lathe.
Wood Slimline Designs
When it comes to making wooden pens, I always try to think about the hardware that I’m going to match it with.
As a general rule, I match darker wood with chrome, silver or gold. Lighter wood goes well with titanium or black. I prefer burl wood as you get a lot more detail, especially on thinner pens.
Let’s start with these two, which are made from Australian Malee Burl. The one on the left is Red Malee, while the other is Brown Malee. Both are very hard, dense wood that turns well but does require more time to make.
Next, a padauk wood slimline that I matched with black hardware. It turned out overall a bit dark and gloomy, but maybe that’s exactly what you are looking for.
On the right, is a Black Ash burl pen. I always have trouble with Black Ash chipping and breaking apart, so I had to be extra care full when making this pen.
White Oak and Curly Maple pens are a joy to make. The wood is easy to turn and polishes to a really nice gloss. I’ve made other oak pens but never managed to photograph them.
Acrylic Slimline Pens
I noticed that a lot of woodturners and pen turners focus on making wood slimline pens, or wood pens in general. I’ve always preferred to make acrylic pens.
Yes, they are harder to make and mostly involves some additional steps. Personally, I think the right acrylic blank makes a really unique, beautiful pen that may just last longer than wooden ones.
Most of these acrylic slimline pen designs have been in my collection for a long time. They turned out so perfect, that I hesitated in selling them.
The blue and black swirl resin pen was one of the first Slimline pens I made. I then re-did it when my skills improved. The orange and black acrylic pen was more recent and is one of the best buffing jobs I’ve done on acrylic.
These two are from “crushed acrylic” pen blanks. Basically, you make an acrylic blank, chop it up or blend it, then re-cast it into a new blank with a different color resin.
Let’s not forget pink pens! I don’t normally make them, but done right, they look really sharp! The pen on the right is “simstone” or simulated stone. Real stone is crushed into a powder, then recast with resin.
This pen was the hardest to make. The stone kept blunting all my tools and I had to re-sharpen them many times.
So there you go, the top slimline pen designs I’ve personally made (and taken photos of). I’ve priced these at an affordable price, feel free to get them from my Etsy shop.
I’ll be adding more to this list as I make them. I’m planning to make some from Thuya burl, Amboyna Burl, and Olivewood.
Which one do you love the most?
