BOMApens are made primarily of tungsten. Because of tungsten's extremely high melting point (6200°F), it's first formed in one foot long bars produced by a powder metallurgy process called sintering (compress powder and bake at 2300°F).

Tungsten is extremely hard and rigid. Even as a 93% pure alloy it pushes the limits of machinability. It wears tools quickly and cutting speeds are agonizingly slow. Drilling this alloy is a nightmare of siezed and snapped bits.

Nevertheless, the tungsten bars are machined, drilled and bored in a CNC lathe according to programs worked out by painstaking trial and error. Next the bodies have an area hand polished to recieve the BOMA micrologo as well as the pen's individual number.

The micro logo is applied in a unique laser machining operation that employs a laser with an extremely high resolution and power density–it's not your mother's laser. Inspection of a BOMApen logo with a magnifier is encouraged.

Once logoed, the pen is masked and then blasted with coarse silicon carbide particles to give it a uniquely touchable finish. Next, the pen body is given a proprietary heat treatment where the exterior is reacted with carbon at temperatures in excess of 2000°F to sheathe the pen with a thin layer of tungsten carbide. This guards against disfiguring scratches that would have been inevitable in a regular sandblasted finish.

The three endcaps are machined from tungsten, Alloy X-750 and 6Al-4V titanium. The titanium is by far the easiest to machine of the three materials.

Finally, the mechanism is installed and the pen assembled. It's packaged in an exquisite, custom cherry wood box that also serves as a desk cradle and display. Inside, a sensuous viscoelastic foam called Poron holds the pen and endcaps.

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