Tactile Turn/Anso of Denmark Knurled and Hexagonal Machined Titanium Anso Pen, Side Click Button, 5.3" Overall - 10-JA2-TTM-TTM

Description

TCTJA2TTMTTM: Anso Pen - Titanium

Tactile Turn

Written by Will Hodges of Tactile Turn

My father was a cabinetmaker before he met my mother and joined her architectural scale model company, and he had a deep appreciation for modern Danish furniture. Clean design, great materials, and proper craftsmanship are part of the culture, and no one exemplifies the attention to detail better than the legendary designer, Jens Anso. I remember seeing some of Jens' knives at Blade Show Atlanta back in 2017 and loving them, but I was too intimidated to introduce myself. Imagine my surprise when Jens reached out about a pen collaboration in August 2024. I immediately sent the initial design specs to the team, picked my jaw off the floor, and set the wheels in motion.

Our first formal meeting was at Blade West later that year, where he showed Kevin and me his prototype, and we started talking through how to make it happen. He wanted a VERY slim pen with a hexagonal body, which is much more difficult to manufacture than it seems.

Slim pens on their own are difficult, and Jens wanted to go significantly slimmer than anything we had done before and utilize our Side Click mechanism, requiring plenty of iterations to get right. On top of that, the hexagonal body was a bigger challenge than expected. Most of the time, hexagonal-shaped pens are made from extrusions of aluminum or brass, which is straightforward. Titanium hex is a different story, and the suppliers that were willing to do it required huge orders, which we didn't feel comfortable with, knowing that if the tolerances were even slightly off, we'd be sitting on a lot of very expensive scrap.

Instead, our solution was polygonal turning, which involves timing a cutter and the rotation of the material just the right way to produce different shapes. I won't bore you with too many details, but I will say that there were some serious barriers in changing DEEP internal settings in the machine that ran these that will keep most other machined pen makers from doing this. Credit to Kevin's incredible knowledge and experience to make this happen.

This pen is a result of an amazing collaboration – Jens came up with something quite difficult, and the team stepped up to make it happen. I couldn't be happier with the results, and I know Jens feels the same way.

Designed from the ground up

While it may resemble typical Side Click models, the Anso pens feature a special, slimmed-down version of the mechanism to fit the even "slimmer than slim" body diameter. The knurled grip and hexagonal body sections are new additions to the Tactile Turn catalog, which required using new (to them) tools and plenty of trial-and-error. One immediately obvious change is that the side button to retract the ink refill is located on the opposite side of the clip.

One length, multiple materials

Because of the slim diameter constraints, the Anso pen only accommodates Parker-style refills and comes in a single length equipped with an Ohto PG-105 0.5mm blue ink refill. For the initial batch, we're excited to offer the pen in both Stonewashed Titanium and Brass, which adds a bit more heft and will patina over time.

About the designer

Jens is a Denmark-based industrial designer and knife maker known for his high-quality, functional, and beautiful designs, which have earned him international recognition since 2001. His work is characterized by a distinctive form of language with influences from modern architecture, traditional carpentry, and vintage Danish furniture.