This was a really fun place to visit, I love that the place is run by volunteers, you can really see the passion.

The first room has a lot of great info, a timeline and some really impressive visuals made up of different nibs. You can also get stuck in trying your hand at calligraphy using a whole host of different nibs.

The second room had an introduction via a ten minute video, with various people talking about the Birmingham pen nib industry (including some lovely old women who used to work in them, one was particularly endearing to watch) After that, one of the guys showed us step by step how to make a nib, we each got to try it ourselves and ended up with a nib each that we created (in fact, we ended up with three! One we made, one that we just did the final cut on because ours hadn't gone through the hardening process like they need to, and a third because they usually have some hardened ones for people to cut and keep, so instead we got a totally different - fully useable - one for free as well!) In this room there were also loads of fun things to look at, including various different ink wells and bottles.

The last room is tucked off to the side, we got shown through and were greeted by the local historian volunteer. He talked us through various things, going off on interesting tangents about other historical Brummies of importance in the process. You could really tell he loved what he did. That's the only downside though, he talked about a bunch of things then said 'ok, now I'll show you the exit' rather than giving us time to actually explore that room. It wasn't until I got home and looked at the map that I realised we completely missed out the typewriter and graphology section (the latter I think would have been really interesting) Now, maybe these two sections weren't open - I do know the site said some things, like the nib process, need specialists in, so when they aren't there you can't do them. But we didn't even get to have a proper look in the cabinets because he stood in front of each when he explained stuff to us so a bunch of it was blocked from view.

So all in all a great, niche place to visit if you're interested in pens, calligraphy or even steelworks, but maybe the enthusiastic historian - as great as his insight was - should remember to let the visitors experience the room after he's finished his talk.

I grabbed a postcard and nib in the gift shop, both were reasonably priced