It seems that making fancy metal pens based on legendary pen cartridges are the profitable thing to do this year. The Render K Custom-Machined Pen is the latest in a series of pens I’ve been ogling, starting with cw&t’s Pen Type A and followed by PHX-1 Design Toolkit.

Each of these pens has a unique story about the creators pursuit of something better. The Pen Type A’s background is like a quirky love story, whereas the PHX-1 reads like the engineered result of a straight-forward business opportunity. The Render-K’s story is one about small American custom machine shops that design, fabricate, and are starting to create their own products. They are together creating the early history of the DIY-to-market movement that started with websites like Etsy; now we’re moving on to more complicated stuff!