About me

My Story in Pen Spinning

(My Facebook Page: https://web.facebook.com/IFMiraclePS/)

How I started

If you've been following me in my page then I'm sure you've heard of this story before but these are some things I didn't mention. I started Pen spinning back in 2014 in my Sophomore year, I was told there's this trick pen that can be balanced on your finger, I asked where to get it and it was from a store near our school. So I bought it and I thought it was one of those weird Japanese toys but it was actually a Zhigao V1 Spinning pen. I didn't what it was but I thought it was cool, I bought all the designs and colors and I showed it off to my classmates. 

After buying those ZGV1s I remembered my Dad thought me thumb around back in my 3rd grade so I relearned it. I showed it to my friends and they thought it was cool. A friend of mine named Maverick thought me "charge" and it kicked off from there. 

I started to search up tutorials in YouTube for Pen Spinning tricks, keep in mind I didn't know there are communities of this hobby. With new tricks I learned I showed it off to Maverick and he was impressed. I started to learn more tricks in a faster rate than my friend and eventually they all stopped practicing. I asked my Dad to buy me a Pen mod from Pen Shop PH and he gave it to me as a birthday gift, we bought an Ivan Mod.

Why I Stopped

1 year after they've all quit and now I'm an intermediate Spinner, still oblivious to the giant community behind Pen Spinning, I was an underground Pen Spinner. I started to not improve and it got tedious. I lost my only pen mod when we went to the cinema. I still loved that Ivan mod. (press F to pay respects). I stopped Pen Spinning in my Senior year of High School, didn't spun a pen mod for 1 whole year, I was too busy with school and other stuffs.

How I  Returned

It all started  when I searched "Pen Spinning" in Facebook and it lead me to the "International Pen Spinning Community" created by the CEO of Pendace, the Lord and Savior himself, Sir Ace (I'm a fan, ok? lol) and IPSC lead me to Pendace, an actual thriving Pen Spinning Shop in Philippines. I was ecstatic, I ran to my sister and basically yelled "Ate! Pen Mods!" and she and Dad bought me a hypnotic Power Buster V2 and a Buster Waterfall. 

After getting my new pen mods around mid July of 2017 I was pretty happy. I practiced more I wasn't improving though. I posted my first Free Style in years and I got good feedback from other spinners.

How I joined Iron Fist

I was accidentally added by a member of the IFPS in their GC, of course I was surprised because I wasn't still a member in the Facebook group itself. I was later removed though. I gained the courage to request to join Iron fist.

I was accepted by Head Admin himself. I talked to other spinners for the first time in years, they were nice people and they were helping me improve and I kept improving. I eventually made a page for myself and now we're here. 

My Experience with the Pen Spinning Community

There are many Pen Spinners scattered around the world and we all commune using the internet. Each of us give advises to each other and we inspire each other to spin better. The PS community is the nicest community I've been in, I talked to other spinners not just about PS but about other things
like school and life.

Iron Fist recently released our latest Collaboration video: "Black and White"

My Experience with Competitions

So I recently won the first "Iron Fist Pen Spinning Cup" it was just a small competition yet I felt like I finally marked my existence in Pen spinning, sure it was just a small tournament but I improved so much as a spinner and most importantly I had fun, I got to battle one of my PS idols from the Philippines, not at his full potential though but at least I battled him in the finals. 

(all of my entries in the tournament)

(My IFPSC Prize)

Why do I still do Pen Spinning?

Whenever I see Maverick he'll always ask me "I can't believe you still pen spin dude" and I always answer that I still learn new things in Pen Spinning and I generally enjoy being in the community and helping other newbies.

It's fun to do Pen Spinning, to manipulate a pen mod to spin the way you want it to feel amazing, my fingers barely touching the pen mod feels like the mod is floating in my hand, it almost feels alive when I spin it.

The feeling of filming and a difficult combo always intrigues me to spin better, the emotion I feel when I won IFPSC1 was ecstatic. I felt like I've really improved my game in Pen Spinning.

Community

Boards & Communities

(FPSB, PPSC, JeB, IPSC, UPSB, BPSC, GPC, and KIPS logos)

There are many Pen Spinning boards world wide, there's Universal Pen Spinning Board (UPSB), JaPen Board (Jeb), Philippine Pen Spinning Community (PPSC), French Pen Spinning Board, Thailand Pen Spinning Community (ThPSC), Belgian Pen Spinning Community (BPSC), German Pen Spinning Community (GPC), Korean Instittute of Pen SPinning (KIPS), Vietnam Pen Spinning (VNPS), International Pen Spinning Community (IPSC). Each board and Community correspond in which country it is from, except UPSB and IPSC it is considered as an international English Speaking.

These boards and communities commune through the internet through Forums and Facebook although Facebook Pen Spinners have the "Community" name in their communities which separtes them as being a board.

Groups

(FATE [PPSC] IFPS [PPSC] Sephirot [JeB])

I'm from a PPSC group called Iron Fist, and there are other groups like Sephirot from JeB, Fate from PPSC, and TH from PPSC (Not sure though I heard it's an international group). Learning Pen Spinning is hard because you don't get guidance from other spinners, spinners who don't join boards or groups are called "Underground Spinners" these are spinners who tend to spin and learn on their own. Groups are like teams inside a board although you don't need to get into a group but I prefer if you do so. 

As an ex underground Spinner, I can say that being like that got boring in 2 years and I decided to quit PS and I thought I wouldn't come back because I stopped improving. I'll talk about this in another segment but the point i'm trying to make is that it's essential to learn pen spinning in a group that way you can do friendlt battles and collaborations.

Competitions

I recently won (I don't know how) a small tournament in Iron Fist and I had fun and I improved a lot and I also battled one of my Pen Spinning idols which was cool.

Pen Spinning World Tournament (WT)

The World Tournamnet (WT) is held every 2 years. It is one of the biggest pen spinning competition in the Pen Spinning world, it is a single eliminitation format and it consists of single person participants. The entries are transferred via internet and it is judged based on their skill and talent.

Champions:

KTH (2007)

SpinnerPeem (2009)
s777 (2011)

Sutomo (2013)
Menowa* (2015)
Sirapob (2017)

Pen Spinning World Cup (WC)

In conjunction with WT, WC is also held every 2 years so both competitions are held in intervals. Obviously, WC is also one of the biggest competitions in Pen spinning but it is a team based or each spinner represents their board as a group, the entries follows the same format as Wt.

Champions:

JeB 2008

Toro, Pesp, Key3, Ayatori, kUzu, and Saizen

THPSC 2010

SpinnerPeem, Supawit127, Dongza, BaiMai, The Legend, and 8

FPSB 2012

Fel2fram, Anikis, Gisele8, Blue, Ivabra, and Lindor

JeB 2014

ACT, oZone, HAL, Menowa*, mi, and Kay

Pen Spinning Olympics (PSO)

It is one of the new Pen Spinning Competitions, it contains 5 individual games which has its own theme, Power, 2 hands, Complexity, Wipers and Taps and counters. The participants have to create a combo that goes into the theme of the game. There are no current winners now but I will update this blog on who will win.

The hosts of PSO are coffeelucky, Zkhan, i.suk and other judges/managers.

Battles

Battles are a way that only two pen spinners battle in a board or a group in which both participants post a video on their forum with a tag "Battle: vs *insert name*" the community will decide who wins the battle. 

Pen Modding

Pen Parts

(Photo from Vôre-Tèx Pen Modding go to his website voretex.pm)

Pen Spinning is an expensive hobby, surprisingly. If you live in Philippines like I do Pen mod parts is expensive let alone a pre-built pen mod, ranging from a minimum of ₱300 to ₱1,700 pesos depending on the condition, quality, specific pen part, and supplier.

Theoretically, any pen can be used as a pen mod part, as long as it has a removable grip, removable tip and a round body. When I was a 5 month old Pen Spinner I bought pen mod parts at our local store and it was bad, Looking back at it now after 4 years I’m horrified. Luckily you can buy Pen mods and Pen mod parts here in the Philippines either with PenWish, PenSpinStore, and if you’re Filipino Like me I’m sure you’ve ordered from Pendace because other stores are international and the shipping is too expensive.

Any Pen part I’ve bought is from overseas like the Pilot Dr. Grip from Japan and Dong-A Comssa frrom Korean. The locations of these pens can be also found in Philippines if you live near a Japan surplus.

Pen Mods

(Photo from Vôre-Tèx Pen Modding go to his website voretex.pm)

Pen mods or Pen modifications are the result of combining marker  caps or pen caps, marker bodies or pen bodies, pen tips, pen rings and pen grips resulting in as a double sided or single sided pen with concentrated weights at each end and making pen spinning tricks slightly easier.

Each Pen mod has it’s own qualities and every Pen Spinner has different tastes in Pen Mods. Pen mods are claimed or made by Pen modders depending on the weight distribution, spinning surface, length, momentum and aesthetic. Like cigarettes, pen mods have different aspects of what I’ve mentions that’s why many Pen Spinners own boxes of pen mods.

There are dedicated businesses in making pen mods as I’ve mentioned before and even people dedicated their livelihood in pen modding like Voretex from France. As a Pen Spinner I’ve created my personal pen mods and I watched tutorials in YouTube and I based my creations from the tutorials I watched.

Pen Modding takes time, effort and creativity. If you make a mod in a hurry then it’ll ruin the quality of your pen mod. Pen modding also takes practice because cutting a grip or body with precision is a like operating a surgery, one mishap and it’s ruined. Any part and structure of a pen mod can affect on it’s feel.

Tricks

Tricks

Theoretically, there are thousands of pen spinning tricks as long as it’s within the boundaries of physics and new tricks are still being made today. There are 4 fundamentals of Pen spinning, the thumb around, charge, sonic and finger pass. Combining these fundamentals will result in new tricks, thumb around and finger pass will create extended thumb around and fake double and combing sonic and finger pass will create twisted sonic.

There are 6 types of tricks the spins, sonic variations, arounds, counters, wipers and power tricks. These tricks are integrated into each other to create linkages.

Sonic variations

• These types of tricks uses the momentum of the pen to pass into finger slots which is the main goal of the “Sonic”. Tricks like these mostly use conical movements.

Spins

• It  alludes to the movement of a pen circularly turning while it’s in contact with the hand. 
• Spins done on the knuckle side of the fingers are called “Top Spins”.
• There are numerous adaptions of the Spin, and the names for the most part include the body parts the pen spins. 

Arounds

• It is a trick performed in which the pen rotated around the hand, finger or any body part. 
• Tricks that are performed from which specific body part is part of its name. 

Counters

• These are tricks performed to swiftly change the direction of the spin of the pen.

Power Tricks

• These are tricks performed in a fingerless manner, meaning the spinner doesn’t fully hold the pen while performing this trick but only pushing and guiding it to specific spins and arounds. 
• Power tricks are normally continuous in nature, if a robot arm is programmed to do a specific power trick over and over again it will be performed infinitely.

Wipers

• These are tricks performed in a manner in which the spinner holds the end part of the pen and rotates the pen in 180 degrees upward in the shape of an arc.
• Conjunctions of passes are called “Infinity trick” in which the motion of the pen follows the path of the infinity symbol.