Khalisi's got nothing on me

I have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive personality. I wanted to try making one of these and ended up producing about two dozen. Hmmm...

Stylus, styluses or styli?

What is the plural of "stylus?"
I'm so confused.

Anyway, here are some images from the custom-make for P.

P selected two premium (and expensive!) blanks. Here they are marked and ready for cutting. The "X" will help me re-align the blanks on assembly. The portions to the right will go to scrap.

Here they have been cut, drilled, painted inside and had their brass tubes glued into place. I'm using epoxy for the first time on the recommendation of many pen turners, so they have to set overnight.

With the epoxy fully set, the blanks are trimmed and rounded. Note that my "X" is now gone, but I marked inside the brass tubes on meeting ends.

Roughing down to cylinders.

Now the gouge for finer shaping. These premium blanks cut like butter. Beautiful.

And then the skew for a smooth, fine shape.

100 grit. Ugh, sanding.

220 grit. Tedious.

320, 400, 600 & 800 grits. I'll spare you. It's monotonous.

Finally starting to look pretty. MicroMesh wet sanding. There are 10 steps.

Followed by a friction polish and then a wax. This one's almost ready.

Roughing on blue.

Shaping blue with a gouge.

Fine tuning with the skew.

And sanding ... lots and lots of sanding.

After the 800 grit pad, Blue will get wet-sanded with MicroMesh then polished.

Parts layout and check on Red before assembly.

Parts layout and check on Blue.

And here is the finished pair!