Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
FM has rather girly handwriting.
Fountain pen - recommendations
- Thread starter HackneyE9
- Start date
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
For particularly important documents, I dot the "i"s with little flowers.
I'm impressed by the speed with which quoad has become a big pen snob, it's really quite encouraging. For added credit one can always:
* insist that vintage pens are the only ones ever worth buying and if you don't know how to restore one you might as well never write;
* pick a favourite colour X and then say, of every ink, "that's not real X, it's too pink/blue/orange/yellow/ultraviolet" (bonus points: insist that the only true X is found in Pilot Iroshizuku ink)
* pick a brand+model+year and then say, in response to any post, "that wouldn't have happened / would have been better if you'd been using a Brand Model Year";
* slag off Noodler's ink as being pen-eating alchemical slop OR slag off any ink which isn't proof against lasers and alien attack as being worthless for practical use;
* pretend to grind one's own nibs and then give people really poor advice about adjusting their own nibs with brown paper bags and balloons.
I'm impressed by the speed with which quoad has become a big pen snob, it's really quite encouraging. For added credit one can always:
* insist that vintage pens are the only ones ever worth buying and if you don't know how to restore one you might as well never write;
* pick a favourite colour X and then say, of every ink, "that's not real X, it's too pink/blue/orange/yellow/ultraviolet" (bonus points: insist that the only true X is found in Pilot Iroshizuku ink)
* pick a brand+model+year and then say, in response to any post, "that wouldn't have happened / would have been better if you'd been using a Brand Model Year";
* slag off Noodler's ink as being pen-eating alchemical slop OR slag off any ink which isn't proof against lasers and alien attack as being worthless for practical use;
* pretend to grind one's own nibs and then give people really poor advice about adjusting their own nibs with brown paper bags and balloons.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Hooded nibs == penguin bills.
FACT.
FACT.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Ah, but will he stay a pen snob, or will he give his heart to another type of collectable item once he's satisfied the pen Jones?
Tbf, this is more of a simple progression to fountain pens. Rather than pens being a new field of amory.Ah, but will he stay a pen snob, or will he give his heart to another type of collectable item once he's satisfied the pen Jones?
19sixtysix
Life as viewed from a Gay Gorbals Garret
Urban has its own pen
NB I may be pogoed for this as I haven't read whole thread
NB I may be pogoed for this as I haven't read whole thread
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Urban has its own pen
NB I may be pogoed for this as I haven't read whole thread
No, you haven't pogoed.
I fancy trying one, just to see whether the supposedly "ergonomic" shape is, in fact, more ergonomic.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
When they came out, about a year before I left school, it was the black and chrome Parker Vectors that were seen as the "classiest" pen you could have.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
£11 from Cultpens, with 1 cartridge of carbon ink.
I'm wondering if it'll work with the Oxblood and a convertor
But might order a bottle of Carbon too Proof of principle
I might explore the possibility of asking for a nice-ish EF Japanese nib of some sort for my birthday next month
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It shines very slightly in the light, too.
I think the lines of my fan-fucking-tastic carbon pen are so incredibly slender that beams of light shine around them. There is no room for shine, so to speak, as the lines are too slinky to be illumined.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
In contrast, I might possibly have ordered one of the special M205 highlighter demonstrators, with a stock BB nib.
http://www.pelikanpens.co.uk/acatalog/Traditional_205.html
http://www.pelikanpens.co.uk/acatalog/Traditional_205.html
editor
hiraethified
Nice. But £80!
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Special presentation box! Special highlighter ink! Limited edition!
...yeah, I know.
...yeah, I know.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Also I have to say that I really like broad nibs for writing with, when you have the space. I have a Lamy 2000 with a B nib that's basically BB for any other manufacturer, and it's the loveliest pen to write with, particularly if you use an ink that gives you some nice decorative shading. It was my favourite pen when I was writing my NaNoWriMo novel last year, which means I must have done 30-40,000 words with it.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Well this arrived yesterday.
It comes in the loveliest box ever, with a 30ml bottle of evil fluorescent ink. It actually also works very well indeed. Even the fat nib is narrower than standard highlighters, and more precise, and the ink is like the brightest of bright ink highlighters just after you uncap it, but _all the time_ - it will never partially dry out and be a bit miserable, and you can see the ink level all the time.
It would be an excellent present for somebody who did a lot of highlighting and liked pens. I don't think they've not made a vast number of them but then, I don't imagine they sell very many either, so stocks should last for a while.
(Also, as people asked me, yes you can load it with any ink, and you can also swap the nib out too very easily - Pelikan nibs come from EF to BB.)
This is one of my favourite quotations of all time.
Blown away by the Sapporo, btw. Will upload some photos in a minute. Artichoke has the camera in France atm, but I've done what I can with my phone
It's BLUEBERRY. Which is a LOVELY colour.
And the nib is just staggering
tbh, I kinda fucked up with my introduction to it, because I wrote my aunt an 8-page handwritten letter, on John Lewis 100gsm writing paper. Which quite blatantly isn't made for fountain pens (it can't even handle my fat-arsed Lamy Safari - smoother paper seems better for writing, yes?)
btw, what IS the point of pigment ink? Does it just last longer, like? Dry a bit quicker? And more resistant to highlighter?
Because tbh in pure terms of WRITING, it seems pretty similar to e.g. Diamine. wrt the Sepia vs Oxblood, at least.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
I have one in Blueberry. Pity I messed the nib up a bit
This is a contentious point. A lot of people will say that Clairefontaine make the best writing paper, for instance, because it is surfaced and smoother, but I find it a bit of a pain to write on as ink takes forever to dry (sometimes not fully drying at all, leaving a residue that smears at a touch) and some inks just don't like it. The same goes for Black N Red. On the other hand most people hate Moleskine paper as it will just bleed and feather. Weight isn't an amazing guide unfortunately, only for show-through (where you can see the ink from the other side just because it is dark, rather than bleed which is where the ink actually passes through the paper due to absorbency).
My favourite paper is made by Midori for their Traveler's Notebooks, which combines slight absorbency with smoothness. On the other hand, anything which feathers with a carbon ink is worrying. Newspaper doesn't feather appreciably with it.
The ink itself is designed to behave in exactly the same way as other fp inks - otherwise it would probably clog them up. Inks for dip pens don't have to worry about this. Diamine, though, make dye-based inks which work by dyeing the paper, as opposite to pigment or particle inks which leave a substance physically behind in the top layers of the paper. Generally the former are water soluble to a greater or lesser degree, and can almost always be removed with _some_ sort of solvent. Pigment inks are far more permanent. They don't fade with water, or sunlight, or bleach - its less resistance than that they just sit there and say "yeah? sorry, I don't know what you expect me to be doing here". The colour also tends to be much denser as it doesn't depend on the concentration of the ink: you will notice that the line is basically the same colour from beginning to end and side to side. (Some dye based inks have this as well.)
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
It's not even as simple as that tbh because dyes can vary dramatically in how they work (some "dye" inks are super-permanent) and also, you can mix the two.
wrt the line thickness - gotta say, the 'wash' factor doesn't seem like too much of an issue. With the inks I'm using atm, at least. With F and EF nibs, I'm guessing that anything remotely washy would just end up a bit weird.
wrt paper, I'm LOVING Oxford notebooks atm. I guess what I meant by 'smooth' is probably what you're referring to with the 'ink not drying' thing - on those few papers I've tried so far, smoother papers seem to be fairly synonymous with less absorbent. (Perhaps that makes sense?)
"Ah" wrt the pigment. Though I LIKE the effect of fluorescent yellow highlighter over oxblood ink. Gives a wonderful red shadow-bleed highlight effect
wrt paper, I'm LOVING Oxford notebooks atm. I guess what I meant by 'smooth' is probably what you're referring to with the 'ink not drying' thing - on those few papers I've tried so far, smoother papers seem to be fairly synonymous with less absorbent. (Perhaps that makes sense?)
"Ah" wrt the pigment. Though I LIKE the effect of fluorescent yellow highlighter over oxblood ink. Gives a wonderful red shadow-bleed highlight effect
Given the minchy light, I'm not even going to bother with other pics. They're 100% dysfunctional.
INCREDIBLY impressed with the Sapporo, though. atm, the only other pen that's really coming close is the Platinum Carbon (£11
) And, perhaps, the Lamy 2000 on the right paper (though it's a proper pig's ear on anything even a little bit wonky, IMO).Have also discovered that Noodlers works ok if it's going through a Platinum / Sailor EF nib
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Actually, out of the subset "stuff you can buy in Smiths", Oxford is definitely my favourite as well. Can vary between items, but generally tough and reliable and not too shiny. Even their recycled paper is fine. Black N Red has the best form factor but the paper is _really_ shiny and not much good unless you're going to be laying down way too much ink... I've used it for calligraphy practice quite effectively.
