A Craft for Your Inner Colonist ~ How to Make a Feather Quill Pen

Today, we're going to have some fun with your inner colonist as we learn to make a quill pen. 

As a kid, didn't you ever want to make a feather quill pen to use? I bet you did. I bet you took apart your Bic, found a big ol' feather somewhere, and stuffed the ink tube from the pen inside to write with. I know I did. If you somehow missed doing that, how about as an adult? Now, of course, you know that stuffing pen parts inside a feather is not authentic. You want a real nibbed quill and an ink bottle on your desk. Seriously, I've found myself researching feather pens on Amazon. I have this one with interchangeable nibs (for style) on my wishlist:

Making Your Own

If you're feeling crafty, though, here's how to make a real feather quill pen. First, you need a likely feather. If you don't have access to someone's farm where you can get a pretty chicken or goose feather,  or you don't have any turkeys roaming around dropping the occasional feather, you can buy some nice turkey feathers online or in a craft store. Note how wing feathers curve. Whether or not you're left or right handed, the way they curve will feel better in one hand or the other. Back in the day, right-handed folks generally chose feathers from the left wing, and vice-versa for left-handed writers. They chose feathers from a bird's right wing. (Note: if you're going to chase down Granny's pet goose to nab a feather, keep this left-hand-right-wing, or right-hand-left-wing info in mind. Haha!)

Once you have your chosen feather, you need to prep it a bit. First clip off any of those soft, fluffy little feathers near the tip, and trim off any of the lower feathers that might get in the way of your holding the shaft. After that, it's time to strip the membrane. This part isn't 100% necessary, but it makes for a nicer "barrel". Just take a paring knife, and scrape the shaft along the barrel. You'll see the membrane coming off.

Good. Now it's time to cut the point on the end. You'll want to trim it at a nice angle, and make sure that you're cutting in the direction you want to be able to hold the quill to write most comfortably. Inside the end of the barrel is the "quick", kind of a like a plug. You'll need to remove that. Then you'll make a second cut to create the point. If you have trouble picturing this, think of the shape of tip on a fountain pen. If you want to make broader strokes, say for calligraphy, then you'll blunt the end a bit squarer. 

You have one more cut to make. After you've fashioned the tip, cut a slit in the middle of it so that the ink can run properly. Again, picture that fountain pen nib.

And that's it! You're ready to write. You'll need ink of course. You can order some, or you can squash up a few berries like some of those colonists would have had to do. I have a character doing that in my WIP, a sequel to Mist O'er the Voyageur. If you live in an area where you have black walnuts, those work good too.

Writing with Your Quill

Dip the tip of your quill in the ink of your choice, and give it a gentle tap to avoid drips. Make slow, easy strokes as you write, realizing that you'll have to re-load your quill every few words. Imagine how long it took Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Tom Jefferson, and so many of our other founding fathers to pen their lengthy documents! And if you lived in the mountains of North Carolina, there was only a small likelihood that you knew how to write at all. You would probably be just as mesmerized watching someone with that skill as we would be today--watching them write with a quill pen.

Send me a picture if you do this!

In the meantime...what are you reading? I hope you'll add my newly re-released, popular Empire in Pine series to your TBR, Goodreads, and BookBub lists. 

The Green Veil ~ The Red Fury ~ The Black Rose

by Naomi Musch

Here's to History,

Naomi

https://naomimusch.com/

P.S. As I completed this post, I discovered that this topic has been discussed before, in 2012, here on the CQ blog. If you'd like to see some step-by-step pictures and results from another crafty perspective, you can find that post here: Making Pens from Quills

Making Pens from Quills

In preparation for "Spies in Early America" class I'm teaching my home school group, I decided to get some quills. After all, if one is pretending to be a Revolutionary-era spy and will be writing secret messages in homemade invisible ink, obviously one ought to use a quill pen to do it! Right? Right. =)

The only problem is that, well, finished quill pens are a bit pricey. And since I listed my classes as "free," I wanted to keep costs to a minimum. As I perused the quill options online, something soon became clear--if I was going to provide quills to 14 students, I needed to buy them uncut, hence cheaply.

Sure. No problem. I could learn to cut quills. I mean, every person who knew how to write for centuries trimmed their own quills. This isn't a big deal. I'm a smart girl. I can figure it out. Right? Right?? LOL

So I ordered my nice set of a dozen black quills. And as I waited for them to arrive, I read up on the process online, visiting several sites to get the full scope of my project. And the more I read...the more I realized that 12 quills ordered for 12 students gave me absolutely no margin of error. Insert Roseanna taking a trip to Jo-Ann Fabrics.

I ended up with 6 colored quills for $2, the 12 black ones for $7, and a precision knife made by Fiskars. (Colonial folks would have used a pen knife. I, however, have not a pen knife. So I went with a sharp blade that still allowed for control.) And I no sooner got home than got an email saying my class size had increased to 14, so it was a good decision. ;-)

My Fiskars Precision Knife

Then I set up my area. I was working on my old wooden desk, which I didn't want to score with my blade, so I put a cutting board down. Then I got to work preparing the quills. The first step is to shave off excess feathers, as you can see from the mound of colored fluff in the above picture. The idea is to make sure it sits comfortably in your hand without the barbs annoying you. I have tiny hands, so I didn't have much to worry about. But men would have to shave off more, for sure. And most people from days bygone would have stripped the quill entirely. For ascetics, I didn't do that here.

See how the feathers hit my hand at first?

After trimming, the feathers don't start until after my hand.

You'll also want to shave the feathers from the middle section of the quill, where they're really fluffy. I actually found that with the feathers I was using, if I took off all the fluffy looking ones from middle and sides, that was a good rule for how far to shave.

Shaving fluffy feathers from inside the rib

 I then cut off all the tips of the feathers. This has to be done at some point, and one of the articles I read said to do it before tempering. Others said after. I see no big difference when you do it, so...whenever, LOL.

Quill with tip removed

Then comes the tempering--this is when you harden your quill. The quill wears away with use, so if you start with a harder shaft, it'll last longer. You can soak them overnight in water to really help the process, but since these are for recreational use, I went straight to the heat tempering.

For this part of the process, you fill a can with sand and pop it in a 350-degree oven for about 15 minutes. Since I was doing so many quills at once, I used a cake pan. Once the sand is heated, pull it out of the oven and bury your quills in as far as they'll go.

Quills getting their heat treatment in 350-degree sand

Leave them in there until the sand has cooled. I did this part in the evening and left them until morning when I was ready to start working on them again.

Next comes the part I feared messing up royally--cutting. Getting out my handy-dandy precision knife again, I studied the diagrams and descriptions on the various websites and distilled it down to a few main steps.

1. Make a slice at an angle to take away about half the diameter of the quill.

The first slice.

2. Once you've opened the shaft, you can see that inside is a series of circular membranes. Get those out with the tip of your blade and, in the section beyond your cut, some little pokey thing. I used a cuticle shaper from a pedicure set, LOL.

Removing the membrane

3. Then you do the slices to form your nib. Start by making a slit parallel to the shaft and centered, from the tip up about 1/4 inch. This helps the ink flow to the point

Making the slit

4. Then you start shaping the point into a nib. Here are some pictures from various angles.

5. The final step is to work the point. I just pressed my blade to the tip, perpendicular to the shaft, to square it off. Then took it at an angle from both top and bottom to get the best edge.

As I practiced using them, I trimmed a bit here and there until I found the shape that made the ink flow best. And of course...

Writing desks - then and now! By MaryLu Tyndall

A person's desk always tells  a great deal about them. Which is why I hesitate to show you mine!  But I want to give you a comparison between a typical writer's desk today and one from colonial times.  First, here is my desk. Mind you, I didn't clean it up for this picture.. this is it's normal condition when I'm writing under deadline (actually it's usually worse!)

I won't list all the items you see.. but suffice it to say, I've got my keyboard,monitor, a couple of pens, tons of papers containing notes on characters, plots..etc. Tape, my mace gun, an old compass, a tall ship, cannon, candle, pictures of family, an empty mug that used to hold my green smoothing, lip gloss.. etc..  Does this tell you a bit about me?  If it does, I don't want to know what that is!! LOL

Now, here is a typical desk from colonial days. (Picture taken from the Early American Life Magazine)

What a difference! How times have changed. Some of the items of note are the quill pens lying atop the pewter ink stand. To the left, a wooden sander and seal, a pewter mug (hey like mine! sorta), various papers and books, spectacles and case, candlestick, brass snuffers a snuff box, etc..

Other items that you might find, depending on the owner and purpose of the desk, would be account ledgers, a ring of keys, money scales, and perhaps a small metal safe if the person owned a business. If the person was a student, you would see writing exercises and textbooks in Greek or Latin, history or Mathematics.

Of if the owner of the desk was a lady, you might find a set of watercolors or a lovely tea cup!

Either way, you could tell, then as now, much about the owner of the desk just by observing the things upon it. If a desk was large and ornate, most likely it was owned by someone of means, or someone in a prominent position.  Desks were often handcrafted to suit the owner's needs and position and were of such value that they were passed down through generations regardless of the changing furniture styles.

One of the items found on most desks was the quill pen. The quill pen was the main writing instrument from the 5th to the 19th century when Joseph Gillott patented steel pen nibs in 1831.  Feathers often had to be clipped off the quill pen to make it easier to write with and the tip was often scraped with a knife to facilitate the flow of ink.   Ink was stored in containers made of pewter, soapstone, ceramic or glass. Most were round and only held enough ink to wet the tip of the quill. An inkstand as shown in the picture above held the ink bottles and quills as well as a sand pot, so everything would be handy for the writer. Before 1820, sand was poured on the document to absorb the ink before the paper could suck it in and blur the writing.  These sand pots became obsolete in the early 19th century when new types of writing papers were developed which didn't absorb the ink.

Anyway, thanks for joining me on this journey into desks, then and now!!