Posts filed under Meet Your Maker

Meet Your Maker: Dave Dollar, Dave Dollar Custom Pens

Meet Your Maker: Dave Dollar, Dave Dollar Custom Pens

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Dave Dollar didn’t think he needed a lathe, but he couldn’t resist a good deal.

“I made jewelry boxes, and furniture – why would I need a lathe?”

Then, a friend was clearing out his uncle’s house, and there was a garage full of tools. “There were over a hundred pen kits, two hundred blanks, a mini lathe, and all the tooling. It was probably a $4000 value and he sold it to me for $500.” He tried making a pen, and was instantly hooked. The motor on the mini lathe burned out fairly quickly and he replaced it with a better one. “The hook was set when I realized I could finish a piece of functional art in a day.”

After making component pens for two years, Dollar found out that Jim Hinze was teaching a workshop in how to make a three part custom pen at the Southern California Penturners Gathering, and it was on his birthday. So he went. The following week, COVID lockdowns began. By the end of the year he was specializing in three part pens.

He also discovered the As The Pen Turns podcast, and he listened to it during the year when there were no pen shows, thinking about what he could do at shows and thinking about his focus. Because of his name, he began searching for coins to use as cap finials, and found great sources of the novelty coins that he still uses.

When 2022 rolled around and there were pen shows again, he splurged on a weekend attendee pass at the Baltimore pen show, and spent time with some of the people he most admires today – Jonathon Brooks, Ryan Krusac, and of course Jim Hinze. “I didn’t know then about vintage pens – I saw them and liked the small sizes of them. At that point I was just making the Liberty, my largest pen, and some of the mid-size Ikes.” Seeing these pens inspired him to make his Mercury model, a slimmer pen.

Dave Dollar

In October of that year, Dollar attended the Dallas show as a first time vendor, debuting his Mercury model there. “I sold ten pens! That was great!” The Mercury is now his best-selling model. It is convertible, so it can be both a fountain pen and a rollerball that uses the “Schmidt Cartridge-Rollerball System” with a fountain pen ink converter. While some rollerball tips built to work that way have been something of a flop, this one seems to have pleased everyone who has tried it.

Dave Dollar Fude

His most recent innovation was suggested by his wife Judith, who is an Urban Sketcher. She is fond of the Sailor Fude De Mannen nib and asked for a pen made out of nicer material that she could use with that nib. His Freedom model is a turned cap and body that takes the Fude De Mannen section from a Sailor pen – you can bring your own section, or get one from him. Judith Dollar has begun bringing her postcards and stickers to shows, and offering workshops tailored to urban sketchers and journalists; her most popular one, which is already open for registration at this year’s DC show, is “Make a Pocket Sketch Journal.”

Dave Dollar Benjis

Dollar is endlessly inspired by the possibilities of available pen materials, but that doesn’t mean he wants to make his own. “I’m not tempted. I get materials from thirty-two different sources. I have a proprietary material from Joe Fonseca of Just Joe Pens for my ‘All about the Benjis’ pens. I love micarta and ebonite. When I sell a pen, I put in a card with the name of the material and the maker.” He is looking at doing more pens that mix and pair materials, and has had a request from a customer for color bands. One direction he doesn’t plan to go: “I’m not a wood pen guy. There are already several fantastic wood pen artists!”

Dave Dollar Mercury

Like most makers, Dollar doesn’t have many pens he’s made. “The ones I keep are the ones with imperfections, that I can’t sell.” His favorite pen is a Montblanc Starwalker with a fine nib that he bought in France, but he also loves his Leonardo Momento Magico that he bought at Casa Stilografica in Florence, and his Hello Tello Venice with a Nemosine nib.

“The nib is very important to me, and I’m trying to be more cognizant of it.” He’s fine-tuned his model lineup to offer nib variety: Bock #8 nibs tuned by Kirk Speer and engraved with the Dave Dollar logo, for his larger Liberty model; #5 nibs in his Mercury, which allows him to offer Jowo, Schmidt, and Bock titanium nibs; #6 nibs in his Ike model, which lets him use the Nemosine nibs he has a stock of; and the Fude De Mannen in the Freedom model. He is working on some additions to the Mercury’s capabilities – a customer has requested a pen that will take a vintage Esterbrook nib.

Dave Dollar Fountain Pens

Full-time pen making has allowed Dollar to keep up with some volunteer work that is important to him. For eight or nine years he has coached a youth pistol and rifle shooting team, which has had repeat national championships; he’s taking eighteen kids to the Nationals competition in Columbus, Ohio in July. He’s getting ready to pass that commitment to someone else, since his son has aged out of participating. He’s also been asked to make an elaborate receptionist desk for his church. “There are curves, and inlays… it’s taking months.”

Leaning into the money angle suggested by his last name was a way to begin with something uniquely his own. “You have to have a differentiation of your products, and you have to be a little bit of a salesman too - people love the stories of the coins and the materials. You need to strike out on your own and be original. Seeing what other makers do is fine, but you need to not only think outside the box, but think of how many other boxes there are to think outside of.”

Dave Dollar Nib

Having been “invited to retire” from his corporate job in 2023, Dollar decided to give full time pen making a go. He is constantly aware of how different this job is from the one he had. “Going from industrial software and corporate strategy, where I was so far away from the end user… Now there is someone right at my table who is going to use this pen. I’m making functional art and people are buying it and loving it. What better validation is there?”

Dave Dollar’s work can be seen on his Instagram, his website Dave Dollar Custom Pens, and at shows in Baltimore, Washington DC, Atlanta, Dallas, Arkansas, and the Little Craft Fest in Houston. (He hopes to be able to add San Francisco in 2026.)


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Posted on May 12, 2025 and filed under Meet Your Maker.

Meet Your Maker: Bob Dupras, CORRL Creations

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Before Barry Manilow broke out as a solo artist in the 1970s, a lot of people knew his work without knowing they knew it, because of all the advertising jingles he’d sung, written, or both (“I am stuck on BandAids….” “Like a good neighbor State Farm is there…” “You deserve a break today…”). So one might be tempted to call Bob Dupras the Barry Manilow of custom fountain pens – if you have a collection of pens from independent makers, you probably have examples of his work, but he doesn’t make pens. Dupras does not dislike the analogy. “Plus I’ve actually seen a Barry Manilow concert!”

Meet Your Maker: Bob Dupras, CORRL Creations

Following a career in information technology, Dupras’s first choice hobby was to continue his longtime interest in scuba diving, but ultimately back surgery put an end to that, and he turned to woodworking, having enjoyed learning to use a lathe in high school shop class. Kit pens entered his repertoire in 2011, and he found the forums of the International Association of Pen Turners, where he saw resin blanks for sale. He bought some, and soon wanted to make his own to “feed the hobby.” Through the pen turners forums he found Jonathon Brooks of Carolina Pen Company, and asked him for some guidance just to get started. At the time Brooks was using polyester resin, so that’s where Dupras also started. “He coached me on the phone over a month or so. I never met him in person until I went to the DC show two years ago.” Now they both work exclusively in alumilite resin.

Bob Dupras Rods

Shawn Newton, who’s also located in Arkansas, began using Dupras’s blanks, and pretty soon he said, “Put your blanks on Instagram. Everyone is asking about them.” “I had no idea the pen community is what it is, I wasn’t on Instagram.” He will still make a pen now and then – “I mostly make click pens with Schmidt mechanisms, that’s what I like to use myself” – but like most pen makers who turn to making blanks, the blanks have taken over. “I’m not as busy as Jonathon, I don’t do large orders, but I’m busy making blanks.”

That’s not to say that Dupras hasn’t done collaborations, just not ones that require hundreds of pieces. He’s done batches for Lucky Star Pens, River City Pens, and some other independent makers, as well as Leonardo and Galen Leather.

Bob Dupras, CORRL Creations

Inspiration for new materials will often come from collaborator requests, like the NASA photograph of Mercury that led to a collaboration pen with Lucky Star, as well as ocean and water themes. But a new source of inspiration is provided by his five grandchildren, whose initials formed the name he chose for his company: CORRL Creations. “There’s only one vowel so I didn’t have a lot of options! CORRL sounds like coral which called back to my love of scuba diving.” One granddaughter in particular is interested in blank making and has designed some blanks that are selling well and have been made into pens by various makers. “She will probably want to make a pen soon.” Blanks from the kids are all named after them; I got a peek at one called Ryan’s Summer that looked like colors of sherbet.

Bob Dupras Swirl

Dupras has taken his pen skills into a rewarding volunteer relationship with the local Veterans Administration hospital and VA Home. They were looking for things to keep people busy, or provide social and occupational therapy, both to residents of the home, who tend to be older, and to injured veterans temporarily hospitalized. They now have eight lathes, including two for people who have lost a lot of hand mobility, and a complement of twenty volunteers. “That’s the rewarding part – they are like little kids opening a present at Christmas when they make their first pen.” The volunteers organize a booth at the Arkansas Pen Show selling some pens and taking donations for the project at the home and hospital. This spring, Dupras chatted up other independent makers present at the show and ended up getting donated pens from several, including Darailpenz, Newton Pens, Country Made Pens, Magnolia Pens, Hinze Pens, and Dave Dollar Pens, to give away via drawing to people who had donated more than $25; they raised $2000 for the program.

Bob Dupras Red Abalone

Six other VA hospitals have come to see the project and ordered lathes to get something similar started, and then COVID locked everything down, so it’s unknown how they have gotten on.

Despite favoring “click pens,” Dupras is not without fountain pens. He was so impressed with the Dragonfly pen designed by Renée Meeks at Scriptorium Pens, with blanks made he made specially for her, that he went out of his way to be sure he got one.

Leonardo also gave him one of the pens they made from a run of his blanks called Alien Moon. “I belong to the pen group in Little Rock, but I don’t have as many pens as most pen people.”

New directions for Dupras might include metal working. “I’m toying with getting an engraver to engrave nibs, finials, clips. I bought a metal lathe.” Starting to work with metal got slowed down a little by the tornados that swept through Little Rock in 2023. “My shop wasn’t damaged, but I couldn’t get into it for three weeks because of fallen trees blocking the steps down to it.” However, there was a silver lining. “I can confirm that blanks can stay in a mold for three weeks and you can still get them out.”

Bob Dupras Turquoise Abalone

Dupras has always found help from other makers when he needed it. “Anybody I’ve asked has been very helpful.” He’s paid it forward as best he can by helping other makers get started, like Tim Crowe of Turnt Pen Company who’s become a prolific maker of blanks. His bottom line advice is, “It costs more to get into this than you think!” and he shares a bit of wisdom he picked up from Jonathon Brooks: “If you get anything usable out of the first gallon of (resin), it’s a win.”

Bob Dupras

Bob Dupras’s work can be seen on occasional posts on his Instagram @corrl_creations as well as in the work of many pen makers. Newton Pens in particular has a page of photos of available pens in his resins, and calls out the maker of the resin on many photos of pens throughout the site. (If you see a pen you like, ask the maker where the resin came from! They’re happy to tell you and it’s just a fun thing to know!)


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Posted on April 21, 2025 and filed under Meet Your Maker.

Meet Your Maker: Alan Shrebtienko, On A Whim Woodworks

Meet Your Maker: Alan Shrebtienko, On A Whim Woodworks

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Alan Shrebtienko started making pens “100% as therapy.” A high school physics teacher, and a longtime woodworker specializing in bowls, his life changed when he became so ill he spent more than five months in the hospital and emerged with much of his vision gone. “I couldn’t see well enough to return to teaching. It was my second career (after being a commercial construction superintendent,) and I absolutely loved it, and my students were really successful in their AP exams. I had more toys in my classroom than any kindergarten classroom in the state!”

On A Whim Woodworks Pens

Making a lot of bowls was a little too difficult given his new normal. “Pens were easier to see than bowls, and it seemed to be something people were buying.” After two years making component pens, he switched to making kitless pens, at about the time that everyone was locked down at home with time on their hands. Some of his segmented wooden bowls are still on display in galleries in the Louisville area, where he lives, but these days his shop is all about pens.

Shrebtienko’s long years of experience with wood turning have served him well in building his pen business. “I needed to develop a process that is repeatable and doesn’t require vision. I was determined to get it done, and kept doing it till I got it right. When you have a pen on the lathe it’s spinning so fast it looks stationary. Once I make the initial contact it’s pretty easy from there.” He approached photographing and shipping pens in the same way. “The setup for taking pictures doesn’t need touching, it’s the same every time. It took me almost as long to package my first pen for shipping as it did to make it. It’s all about consistency.”

Early efforts at making blanks didn’t lead anywhere productive. “The main thing I was making was a mess.” Instead, he sends photos to blank makers like Tim Crowe – the materials called “The Scream” and “Midnight Borealis” were inspired by his photos. “The guys who do this are like magicians.”

On A Whim Woodworks Window

The need to establish a consistent repeatable process is somewhat at odds with Shrebtienko’s desire to learn new things and add personal touches to his pens. He has made one basic silhouette, the ‘Zephyr’, with a slight taper and flat ends, for a long time. “I should get an award for the most redundant maker.” But a surprising feature that has crept into his work is a variety of ink windows. “I started them because someone asked me to. I went through several iterations to get them down, and I can make them in any configuration – wide, narrow, multiples.” The process he developed required that he make his own molds, and involves cutting windows in an existing blank, then re-pouring around the blank and boring out the center to open the window to the inside.

On A Whim Woodworks Barrel Window

Uniqueness is the main reason that his favorite pen right now is one made by Mad Science Pen Co. for the As The Pen Turns podcast Secret Santa exchange. “I can’t write with anything but a fountain pen anymore.”

When he’s not in the shop, Shrebtienko is deeply involved in the blind and vision-impaired community in his area. He lives near the Kentucky School for the Blind and the American Printing House for the Blind, and is working on a National Federation of the Blind audible Easter egg hunt at the School, with eggs that make a sound. Sighted kids can attend as well, but they participate blindfolded. “For most of these blind kids it will be the first time they’ve been able to participate in the egg hunt with their sighted siblings and friends.” When makers were creating pens in blue and yellow as a sign of support for Ukraine, he made a pen specifically to raise donations to an organization for blind Ukrainians.

The biggest new direction for Shrebtienko is metal work. “I like a clip myself, my desk isn’t level. But I’m not putting a $2 factory made clip on one of my pens.” He took a metalworking class and wants to design his own clips and roll stops, as well as finial coins (“I might need a logo…”). In the meantime, he recently developed a new pocket pen version of the Zephyr model. “It caps and posts using the same triple start threads and can be eyedropper filled or it will also use a standard cartridge. My prototypes kept coming apart when I was uncapping them, so I ended up putting reverse threads on the section and that keeps it all together really nicely. I’ve softened the edge around the cap so it easily slides in and out pocket or purse easily without snagging.”

On A Whim Woodworks Zephyr

Despite the focused effort required to develop his processes, fun is important to Shrebtienko and is reflected in the name of his business. “I’ve always been about whimsical bright fun.” He marvels at the extent to which the pen community has embraced his work.

On A Whim Woodworks Abalone

“I’m not sure that I have expressed properly how much being part of the fountain pen community has done for me personally. I was having a pretty rough time when I had to leave teaching. I went from the classroom to sitting in my little dungeon. When I started making pens and putting them on Instagram, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but people started buying them. I was in shock, I couldn’t believe people actually liked my pens and were buying my pens! I was really in awe. This led me to make a whole new circle of friends - pen collectors, and makers, and writers, and just a whole list of neat people. It basically let me get out of my shop without actually leaving my shop. Being a part of the whole fountain pen world has really turned my dungeon into a functional workshop, and it’s allowed me to tell my story from the point of the victor and not the victim.”

Alan Shrebtienko’s work can be seen on Instagram @onawhim_woodworks and on his online shop.

Posted on March 24, 2025 and filed under Meet Your Maker, On A Whim Woodworks.