Why We Make Our Own Parts at Thorn Mill

If you work in a machine shop, using off-the-shelf components is often the easiest solution. Pen mechanisms, lighter inserts, clips, screws, and countless standard parts are readily available. You can assemble them into a finished product in a relatively short time.

When we founded Thorn Mill, we deliberately chose a different path.

Our goal was never simply to make a pen or a lighter. We wanted to create objects that were entirely our own—designed, manufactured, and refined in-house, with every detail under our control and every part reproducible years later if needed.

That is why almost every component used in a Thorn Mill product is made in our own workshop.

Whether it is a screw, a button, an internal mechanism, or a small connecting part, we usually design and machine it ourselves instead of buying it ready-made.

This approach certainly doesn't make production easier.

It demands more time, more experimentation, and far more patience. Sometimes we spend days refining a single component until it feels exactly right. But knowing that the finished object truly belongs to Thorn Mill makes every extra hour worthwhile.

One of the greatest advantages of manufacturing our own components is design freedom.

When you rely on standard parts, your designs inevitably begin to follow their limitations. The dimensions of a thread, the diameter of a mechanism, or the size of an off-the-shelf component quietly dictate what your product can become.

We work the other way around.

We never adapt our ideas to existing components.

If the part we need doesn't exist, we design and manufacture it ourselves.

Sometimes that means creating a completely custom thread. Sometimes it means developing a mechanism with dimensions found nowhere else. Other times it is a tiny component designed exclusively for a single product.

In short:

Our parts don't define our designs. Our designs define our parts.

That philosophy is one of the foundations of every Thorn Mill product.

Manufacturing our own components also means we can support our products for many years. If a small internal part ever needs replacement, we are not dependent on a supplier discontinuing a standard mechanism. Because we made it, we can make it again.

To us, quality is not measured only by how a product looks on the day it leaves the workshop.

Real quality means it can still be repaired, maintained, and enjoyed many years later.

Perhaps this approach is slower.

Perhaps it is more demanding.

But our passion for machining did not begin with Thorn Mill. Long before the brand existed, we were already designing and building model steam engines, machining every component one by one with the same curiosity that still drives us today.

That same philosophy lives on in every Thorn Mill creation—from the Radin pen to the Glint M lighter—where every detail is designed and manufactured in our own workshop

Because we believe an object truly becomes your own not simply when it carries your name, but when every detail begins as an idea—and is designed and manufactured to serve that idea.