Plus, I wanted to see if I could locate the source of the pen tip prepping disinformation.Īfter spending a considerable amount of time pouring over numerous manufacturer website, I could not find one one manufacturer who said that there was anything you need to do to prepare the pen tips before you use them! Two of them, Optima and Razertip, specifically stated that you should not heat the pen tip in an effort to anneal it.īelow is what I found, including links to sites and/or articles. Image 2, found to the right of the yellow line, is how it looked afterwards.īecause I like to be thorough, I also checked with several different manufacturers to see what they have to say on the subject. Image 1, found on the left of the yellow line, is how the pen tip looked before I heated it up. What heating the pen tip to cherry red will do is discolor it. If you’d like to read about annealing, I found an article by Mead Metals that goes into greater detail and explains the difference between annealing and tempering. I seriously doubt that reducing the hardness of a pen tip is going to provide any pyrography benefits. One YouTuber said the purpose was to condition the tip, but I have no idea what “conditioning the tip” means.Īnother said it was to anneal the tip, but annealing is the process of softening metal to make it easier to work with.

I’m not sure what this is supposed to do. That pen tip was glowing yellow by the end of the allotted time. One said to turn the machine as high as it would go and let the pen tip glow for 60-90 seconds. I only bring this up because I’ve seen several different YouTube videos instructing viewers to heat their new pen tips until they glowed red, and keep them in that state for a bit. Let me state right up front, that you do not need to do anything to get brand new pen tips ready for use! They come from the manufacturer ready for immediate use. Instead, I will present some cleaning information, including the manufacturer’s recommendations, and you can decide what you are comfortable using.Ĭlick on the image to the left to watch a YouTube video version of the tutorial. I’m not going to tell you that my method is the best or only method to use.

The information in this blog can be used on all pen tips regardless of the brand. In this tutorial I’m going to explain how I clean and care for my pyrography pen tips.

Pyrography cleanx box