A quill (natural feather pen)

Today we decided to make a feather quill, I have been wanting to do it for absolute ages now.

My gran taught my mom how to make quills when she was young. It's quite fun and if you are careful and patient you can use it for writing or art and it turns out well.

You can even dye the feather according to your own choice of favourite colours. (You can use a permanent dye like a little hair dye before washing it off with shampoo and leaving it to dry.)


I found a great feather walking back from the beach, yesterday.




To make your own quill, you will need:

- A suitable feather that is the right size.
- A sharp blade (use caution here and adult supervision if necessary i.e cut downwards not UP!)

*I have this great safety blade with my microscope set which is a circular one. My dad also bought me a safety pen knife which is great.

- A work space with good light and a cutting board.




1. Slice off the tip of the feather
2. Remove the central membrane of the feather
3. Remove an angular slice off the lower/bottom surface of the quill tip, leaving the upper surface.
4. Shape the upper level of the tip and angle slightly depending on wether you are left or right handed.
5. Test with some ink.

*You can even write with lemon juice and when its dry you can hold it over a safe heat source like a blow dryer or light bulb and the message will show up.

4. Make a central incision (slice) for about 7mm


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So we made the quill and we got the sepia calligraphy ink out.

Its a messy business and quite tricky to get your words to look good. Its a bit frustrating to have to keep dipping the quill in the ink. Afterwards my fingers were full of brown ink LOL :)

Then we tried out my dads calligraphy pens which use ink cartriges. The nib is shaped about the same as a quill but made of metal so it does not flex about and the ink is tidy inside.

I really liked the calligraphy pens and they come in different sizes of nib and the text looks really nice. I think I will look into calligraphy.

I also did some lemon juice notes. Its fun when the writing comes up and I wrote my little sister a note for when she gets home from school!

Off to get the brown ink off my fingers now..........

Other quill making links: http://www.bvt.org.uk/sellymanor/quill.html
http://unplugyourkids.com/2009/09/22/homemade-quill-pen/