As the owner of a growing business, Josh Hansman of Cincinnati-based 50 Grit Flooring found he needed to carve out time for a hobby. “Among all that craziness, I decided I needed something to do that’s not work,” he says. “I started doing pens—I already had a lathe and an endless supply of wood scraps.” He found that for someone who’s already an expert at working with wood, the pens were easy, taking less than two hours to create, and also low-cost, with a typical kit being less than $20. In a turn of events that surprised no one, he found his new hobby was useful for his business: For special jobs, he now crafts a custom pen that relates to the job. So far he’s done everything from a herringbone pen for a herringbone job to a pen made from a Maker’s Mark stave for a customer who loves bourbon. On a recent job, he created a pen from a beam in the farmhouse and also used the beam to craft a stand for the pen, giving the gift more presence than just handing someone a pen, he says. And while he muses that it’s a little sad that the hobby he was doing to get away from work is now related to work, he’s enjoying it anyway: “I’ve always been a fan of art that serves a purpose,” he says.
