Fountain pen - recommendations

[mrs quoad]

0.5mm for illustration purposes only

Lacks resilience, IME

I've got a broken one on my desk. Too many fiddly bits.

Hate to say it, but for daily use I love my Graphgear 500. I've got two varieties of Ohto and a Graphgear 1000 too, but it's always the Graphgear 500 I come back to. No dicking around, great grip, does the job a good un.

 

[Greebo]

Can't be doing with fountain pens. The idea is nice and elegant but the reality is slow, smudgy, and results in yet another expensively crossed nib if I try to write at the same speed as with a biro. Had a Parker 25 for school use (compulsory for the 1st 2 years at secondary school, biros were allowed after that) - it was uncomfortably cold and slippery to hold. The nib also kept getting crossed. There was also the dubious delight of removing an ink-filled top (inevitably shaken by the bike ride to get there) and getting the ink everywhere.

Writing tool of preference is what I call an inoffensive biro ie. crystal bic with black ink. It doesn't scratch, blot, or suddenly cut out as much as some of the other biros do IME, nor can you get distracted by it suddenly having the wrong shade of blue ink.

 

[hippogriff]

Lacks resilience, IME

I've got a broken one on my desk. Too many fiddly bits.

Hate to say it, but for daily use I love my Graphgear 500. I've got two varieties of Ohto and a Graphgear 1000 too, but it's always the Graphgear 500 I come back to. No dicking around, great grip, does the job a good un.

Although I love the idea of the Promecha I never managed to convince myself they were worth the money, so what I actually use is a Graphgear 1000

 

[mrs quoad]

Although I love the idea of the Promecha I never managed to convince myself they were worth the money, so what I actually use is a Graphgear 1000

Gotta say, I prefer the feel and weight of the Graphgear 500... The 1000 is a lovely piece of kit (and far more beautiful), but my writing's noticeably tidier with its cheaper younger brother

 

[Meltingpot]

Dr Grip Equilibrium ballpen

I like the look of this one;

http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Pilot_Dr_Grip_Equilibrium.html

Trouble is, I just know I'd break that clip off.

 

[mrs quoad]

Anyone who fails to use a 0.3mm automatic pencil is - basically - more than a little bit wrong in the head.

^^^^^

 

[Meltingpot]

The one advantage of pencils for writing is that you can rub out what you've written if you've made a mistake or don't like it. With paper so cheap nowadays, I can't see why I'd need to do that.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

I am also a fan of the staedtler 'chubby' automatic pencil that I have


As for pens...well, I have lots of problems with pens of late as I have arthritis in my hands now and am thinking about using something like a yoropen from now on.
I have to use bulbous pens so I can leave my hand in a relatively natural position and they are invariably average I've found. the ones I've used I mean.
Can't use a straight or smooth or metal pen anymore - too painful, pencils are held much less tightly as I need to produce less pressure

Anywa, yoropen - any users?

 

[selamlar]

I use one of these if i'm going posh:

I do also have a Mont Blanc that belonged to the old man, but it leaks like a bastard all the time.

Oh, and clutch pencils are much better than automatics.

 

[Meltingpot]

I use one of these if i'm going posh:

That does look nice.

I do also have a Mont Blanc that belonged to the old man, but it leaks like a bastard all the time.

Yeah. Dingles (the House of Fraser store in Plymouth) stocked Mont Blancs for a while, but eventually decided they were overpriced and overrated. I think the nibs are smooth though, at least on the one I've tried (the Meisterstuck).

Oh, and clutch pencils are much better than automatics.

I'll accept defeat on pencils in deference to the poster who said he or she had arthritis. You can also write with very gentle pressure if you use a fibretip though

 

[Vintage Paw]

Time for a thread resurrection.

I've decided to jump into the fountain pen market, and have started small with a Lamy Safari F (Charcoal). I did a lot of reading on the fountain pen network and decided it was as good a place as any to start. I love writing little notes and doodles to myself (and others), but wanted something that would stand up to some average note-taking. Seemed like a good (and robust) choice.

It's not particularly beautiful. But that doesn't matter.

I can see this is going to be a time (and money) sink, until I get past the honeymoon period.

Discovering something that can potentially be very expensive when having an obsessive personality isn't a good thing.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Aha. It's not like I've been using fountain pens and related items as my main distraction recently or anything like that.

The Lamy Safari is an excellent pen in my opinion. It's relatively cheap but writes very smoothly and reliably, and is quite comfortable to hold. You can uncap one after days of not using it and it will start off almost like you'd just put it down. You can also change the nibs too, and new ones are only four quid from cultpens.com.

My main pen is a Safari with an EF nib (I am ordering a 1.1mm italic nib just now). I have one with an M nib as well, but that writes a little too wetly for use with most paper. Decent paper like you get with Rhodia or - oddly enough - Red 'n' Black pads, is fine.

I would advise you to get a convertor - you can also buy those from cultpens - because that lets you use proper ink. For general jotting I use Noodler's Bulletproof ink, which is waterproof after just a few seconds as it reacts with the paper. Diamine ink is quite popular as well, and comes in a vast number of colours. Filling pens with convertors is also better for them - it cleans them due to the ink flowing both into and out of the pen, and it makes it much easier to wash a pen out with water.

I'm only really getting started on the obsession as well. You can do things like have nibs custom filed to your specification, and there's round vs italic vs flexible....

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Fountain pen for best, gel rollerball when the paper's not up to it. I like mechanical pencils too

Pen of choice at the moment is the Ohto Tasche FF10T

It's 98mm long when closed, 145mm long with the cap posted and weighs about 20gm

I bought one of these. It's an fantastic pen physically - it is absolutely the coolest thing ever, it even sounds cool when you open and close it - but the one I have just dries out and gums up all the time, and after a while I just couldn't use it On the other hand, some other people I know have bought them and have had no trouble, so perhaps just a few of them are bad.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

oh, and I also use a Fixpencil 22

I do have a very nice automatic pencil from Muji with a cedarwood barrel, which even smells good, but I prefer the clutch pencil because it's easier to sharpen and mix and match leads. You can even get coloured leads. Yes, I have lots of leads.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Aha. It's not like I've been using fountain pens and related items as my main distraction recently or anything like that.

The Lamy Safari is an excellent pen in my opinion. It's relatively cheap but writes very smoothly and reliably, and is quite comfortable to hold. You can uncap one after days of not using it and it will start off almost like you'd just put it down. You can also change the nibs too, and new ones are only four quid from cultpens.com.

My main pen is a Safari with an EF nib (I am ordering a 1.1mm italic nib just now). I have one with an M nib as well, but that writes a little too wetly for use with most paper. Decent paper like you get with Rhodia or - oddly enough - Red 'n' Black pads, is fine.

I would advise you to get a convertor - you can also buy those from cultpens - because that lets you use proper ink. For general jotting I use Noodler's Bulletproof ink, which is waterproof after just a few seconds as it reacts with the paper. Diamine ink is quite popular as well, and comes in a vast number of colours. Filling pens with convertors is also better for them - it cleans them due to the ink flowing both into and out of the pen, and it makes it much easier to wash a pen out with water.

I'm only really getting started on the obsession as well. You can do things like have nibs custom filed to your specification, and there's round vs italic vs flexible....

Pen geek.

I've ordered it in a bundle with the converter (thinking ahead) from The Writing Desk. I've also ordered some of the blue-black cartridges to go in it, but specifically got the converter too so I can try out some inks once I've gotten used to the pen.

It got some great reviews over at the fountain pen network (that website is like crack - and I shudder to think how much money some of them have spent*). It's just the right side of my comfort zone in terms of cost, but I can see that if I really start enjoying it I'll end up either buying a couple more to have different nibs and ink in (even though it's easy to change nibs in it it'll be less faff) or looking slightly higher up the scale at something classic.

I went for the F nib because I hear Lamy nibs are often a little broader than normal. I have no idea what 'normal' is, but since I like reasonably fine lines I thought it would be a good one to start with - and some on FPN said the EF can be a little scratchy sometimes. But I guess you haven't encountered that.


*Browsing a few websites yesterday, I realised it really isn't uncommon to find fountain pens that are upwards of $10,000 *thud*

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I didn't find the EF scratchy, but I did find that it was writing with a bit of an odd style - vertical strokes were noticeably thinner than horizontal strokes. For some reason I then decided I was going to file the nib myself to correct this, which quickly made it worse and introduced other problems, which then got worse when I tried to correct them etc etc. Finally I think I have it working properly but I don't recommend that at all; it probably looks exactly the same now to be honest.

My writing is quite small and I find the M nib makes it almost unreadable on most paper, for instance in my Moleskine, though it's a smoother feeling writing with it. As I said it's also quite wet i.e. puts out a lot of ink. On good paper neither is much of a problem, but you can't always rely on writing on good paper. The F is probably a decent balance.

 

[Vintage Paw]

How do you find it in the moleskine? Some over at FPN hinted that it's troublesome. Ink bleeding through, perhaps? I wouldn't have thought it would feather much because it's got a sheen to it. Perhaps that means it takes longer to dry? Could be a ball ache if you want to turn the page and continue writing on the back.

Incidentally, Amazon have approx. 20% off extra large Moleskine Cahiers at the moment. I really love the ones I've got (tan), so I've bought a pack each of tan, red and blue

I'm so fucking bourgeois when it comes to this sort of thing

 

[FridgeMagnet]

It's a slightly complex issue with the Moleskines. My current notebook is an A5ish hardbacked lined side-by-side Moleskine. In that, with the EF nib and Noodlers' ink, there's no feathering and no significant page bleed (you can see that you've written on the other side, but that's fine, it's not distracting). With the M nib and Diamine ink, you really can't write on both sides at all, the bleed-through is too noticeable, though there's only feathering when you've just filled the pen and the nib is really loaded.

Moleskines are variable by type and period. The squared ones IME are a bit better for this sort of pen. Cahiers have a different paper as well, not necessarily more or less absorbent but rougher for the ones I've had. A nib that's relatively round wouldn't get clogged up by rough paper though.

As I mentioned, the best paper I've used is Rhodia, but if you are thinking of that be careful. The Rhodia pads and standard notebooks should be fine but I bought a Rhodia "webnotebook" - Moleskine clone - and the paper is awful in it. They've updated that line with better quality 90gsm paper recently mind. I have a Rhodia "ePure" book here which is 100gsm proper paper - I'm waiting until I finish the Moleskine before I start using it, but that should be fine. The only trouble is that it isn't lined, just plain paper.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Thanks for the tips.

I'm hoping the fact I'm new to all of this, and not too obsessive yet, that I won't mind too much if there's a little bit of bleeding or whatever. Making sure rough paper doesn't fuck up the nib will be an issue. Ideally I wanted to be able to use it with my normal A4 pad for note-taking and research. I'm not bothered if it shows through the paper since I'm quite messy taking notes and not worried about only using one side of the paper. But I don't want to hurt the pen. Would it be a simple case of flushing it out every now and again, or would it likely cause damage?

If it's any use (and it probably won't be ) I'm currently using Irlen coloured pukka pads (I prefer off-white or coloured paper - easier on my eyes). Doing a quick touch test it feels pretty similar to my cahier paper.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

It's not particularly damaging to the pen, it's just annoying to end up with a fibre stuck in the nib; it's not hard to clean. I don't think you'll have a problem with an F nib - I mostly just had occasional issues using my filed EF nib on one of the little pocket notebooks, and half the time that was probably that I'd done something nasty to the nib. I was just trying the final version of that nib in an A5-ish Moleskine cahier and it was fine.

 

[yardbird]

What a seductive thread.
I've had many pens over the years, but fondly remember the Osmoroid that I used at school and the very first Pentel fibre tipped that I was given by the guy (RIP Hamish Grimes) who did the logo for my username.
I like gel pens and always have my clutch pencil on me

 

[Vintage Paw]

Apart from wanting to win the lottery (obv.), one of my biggest dreams in life is to have a house big enough that I can dedicate one room to a studio/office. One half for all my photography/arty stuff, then a massive, solid wood desk, with a really posh chair, and more sexy stationery than you can shake a stick at.

Actually, it'd probably be better to have the studio in one room, and the desk in another, with all my books. So 1 photography/art studio, and 1 library/office.

God, I'm starting to drool.

 

[Vintage Paw]

My Lamy Safari arrived today. Just been writing with it (just got blue-black cartridges for the moment, but I'm planning which bottled inks I want to try), and it seems to write really smoothly. It's a fine nib, and tbh I don't think I'd want to go any finer (they say Lamy nibs run a bit broad - but this seems as I'd have expected for fine). It works like a dream in my Moleskine cahier (despite warnings among FP aficionados that moleskines aren't that good for FPs).

It writes even smoother when I've posted the cap, which I wasn't expecting. I guess it's the added weight, or the subtle change to the way I hold it, maybe?

So far, so good.

Now I want to track down a Parker 51

 

[idioteque]

Oh god pen pr0n. I have a lovely matt silver coloured fountain pen which I was completely in love with, but got lost in the Great Move Back From University a year ago. I still haven't unpacked everything properly yet so with any luck I'll find it over the next few weeks during my attempts to sort out all my possessions.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Oddly I got some new pen shenanigans delivered today as well. I finally arsed up the EF nib by trying to make it italic - it's now too scratchy to use really, though maybe I can find some proper mechanism to smooth it. However I bought an F nib as well as a 1.1mm calligraphy nib. Changing nibs on the Lamy is ridiculously easy - you just put a bit of tape on the top of it for grip, slide it off, and then slide the new one on.

Also some Diamine dark brown ink which looks very distinguished when used with the calligraphy nib.

 

[Boppity]

I'm no pen expert but when I was in school September was all about grabbing a parker fountain pen. I liked the way it made me handwriting look and I felt posh.

Unfortunately I tended to lose them/have them nicked so I'd be back to biro by January.

Though my last high school (I moved halfway through, so I technically attended two) was the only school I've ever been to that allowed biros. All the others specified ball points or fountain pens only. I never understood why.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Perhaps because you don't tend to press down as hard with a fountain pen? However, isn't a biro the same as a ball point? Biro is just a brand isn't it? Like Hoover? That's what I always thought. Because, like, a biro, like, has a ball in its point. Like.

Anyway, I've ordered some Diamine Jet Black, Blue-Black and Amaranth inks (full size black, 30ml on the other 2), and a dip pen with a couple of nibs so I can try out new inks without having to flush and clean my pen. That would drive me mad. I'm not really that good with delayed gratification.

Of course, I'm quickly seeing the attraction of having 2 or 3 pens so you can have each loaded with a different ink. *sigh*

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I am finding that the Diamine jet black writes extremely wetly. I've used it with dip pens without a problem, but in the Safari with an F nib, it is inconveniently wet for general use. It also seems to take a very long time to dry and/or smear easily - even a very slightly damp finger run across writing from yesterday can smear it. The Noodlers El Lawrence Bulletproof is still my best writing ink I think; dries very quickly, regular flow, nice colour, waterproof once dry.

 

[moose]

Oh! I bought one of those little Tasche fountain pens last week! It's great, even for a cack-hander like me.

I have lost my Copic pencil with the fat lead, though

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I note that the Rhodia Webnotebook is now available in the UK with 90gsm paper. If you've not heard of it, it's basically a bit of a moleskine clone with a thicker cover, in A5 and pocket sizes. Previously they sold it with really bad paper which didn't take fountain pens at all - do NOT buy an old 80gsm one if you want to use a fountain pen with it, honestly - but now it seems that they are doing them with nice proper Rhodia paper, which is generally fantastic with fountain pens, much better than Moleskine.

Extensive review: http://www.biffybeans.com/2009/06/review-new-rhodia-webnotebook-with-90g.html