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Zenostein posted:oh? how were they? I assume they weren't tornado-shaped, but did they at least have the bold designs that seem to carry the brand? The company is still around and still makes fountain pens. https://retro51.com/search?q=fountain+pen
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Feb 21, 2024 22:55
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cruft posted:The Biro pen (Bic in the US), when it came out, was apparently a game-changer. I carry one with me when I'm on travel and I can certainly see the appeal. You get something that works every time, doesn't leak, hardly any feathering, lasts for months, is cheap enough that you throw it away when it's empty, and the only downside is you have to press harder. And being able to press harder without damaging the tip of the pen was an advantage when businesses used a lot of carbon paper.
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Feb 21, 2024 23:03
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Something like Bic Cristal was also extremely unique and stylish at the time. It's an absolutely iconic, timeless design and is even in the MoMA
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Feb 22, 2024 00:46
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cruft posted:It's a fountain pen with a rollerball end. It's weird, I've never seen anything like it before. I think it had a piston fill? Maybe Dolemite can fill us in. It is indeed a piston filler. It's a pretty slick setup. The entire chamber is a converter, in a way. Unscrew the top part of the pen, then twist to fill with ink.
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Feb 22, 2024 03:04
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grack posted:The company is still around and still makes fountain pens. https://retro51.com/search?q=fountain+pen Ah, good to know I could get a p-51 fountain pen if I wanted. Were they any good out the box, or are they just sorta fine, like a sorta-nice sheaffer might be?
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Feb 22, 2024 03:32
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They're essentially jowo kit pens same as every other boutique pen maker. If that's your jam I'm sure you'll be happy with one.
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Feb 22, 2024 03:41
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cruft posted:It's a fountain pen with a rollerball end. It's weird, I've never seen anything like it before. I think it had a piston fill? Maybe Dolemite can fill us in. I did get the pen you sent yesterday but I haven't had time yet to try it out, thanks for sending it! I'll hopefully post up a picture of some writing over the next few days.
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Feb 23, 2024 03:19
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howe_sam posted:They're essentially jowo kit pens same as every other boutique pen maker. If that's your jam I'm sure you'll be happy with one. Yeah, that's a much better way of phrasing my question. Good to know.
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Feb 23, 2024 03:34
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As pens go, having a jowo kit is a recommendation in my book, never had problems with how these nibs would write.
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Feb 23, 2024 20:24
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howe_sam posted:They're essentially jowo kit pens same as every other boutique pen maker. If that's your jam I'm sure you'll be happy with one. Schmidt, actually. The two fountain pens I owned were pretty good writers, though I traded them both for a Delta.
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Feb 23, 2024 23:33
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grack posted:Schmidt, actually. The two fountain pens I owned were pretty good writers, though I traded them both for a Delta. according to their literature they're using JoWo in their Tornado fountain pens these days
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Feb 24, 2024 01:25
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Fair enough, mine were Schmidt nibs, though so I can't speak to any current models
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Feb 24, 2024 02:49
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Refilled a few of my pens (all Lamys now), this time I ran them through my ultrasonic cleaner and hoo boy that thing made them clean. Never had such good results before. And man while I don't rate noodles pens very high, BayState blue is the prettiest ink I have ever seen...
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Feb 25, 2024 11:08
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Oh I should give that a try. The Sailor Kuzu actually stained the stainless steel on my 2000. Never happened before.
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Feb 26, 2024 21:11
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I hadn't considered an ultrasonic cleaner but in retrospect it makes a lot of sense. Would definitely be a lot easier than the classic flushing with water over and over routine.
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Feb 27, 2024 03:28
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Right after I bought my ultrasonic cleaner I put my daily driver Safari through a very deep manual clean. I thought it was factory-clean. I popped it in the ultrasonic and 10 different colored clouds of ink burst from 10 different places and dyed the wash liquid black. Ultrasonic cleaners are really nifty.
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Feb 27, 2024 03:37
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I had a pen develop some mold in the feed so I ran it in a hospital grade ultrasonic and that fixed it right up.
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Feb 27, 2024 03:57
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So....anyone have a recommendation for an ultrasonic cleaner. There's quite a spectrum of them out there.
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Feb 27, 2024 05:12
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I have a 6 liter model (and wish I had a bigger one) that I use for more heavy duty stuff, but I think they're all pretty much the same once you get to this size, that a normal consumer would buy anyway. I once had a real cheap one for small stuff like glasses, but wasn't impressed by it.
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Feb 27, 2024 10:55
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I have an older, small one from rotring that was user for years in an engineering office to clean their technical pens.
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Feb 27, 2024 16:23
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What is it about the shape of a fountain pen nib that makes every person on Earth, when introduced to one for the first time, try to write with it upside down? 
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Feb 28, 2024 18:02
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I bought another Delta
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Feb 28, 2024 19:33
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grack posted:I bought another Delta the delta of your deltas is 1
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Feb 28, 2024 19:57
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I think i'm in the market for a cleaning kit for fountain pens. 2 questions: 1. Are these worth it over something like soapy water? 2. Which one is decent? Also curious about the previous mentions of an ultrasonic cleaner. What can they do for pens?
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Feb 28, 2024 21:40
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I use my baby snot sucker very frequently for cleaning pens. I don't use anything special for a cleaning solution so I'll let others speak to that. Filled up my TWSBI Eco with Robert Oster Peppermint in preparation for spring. I forgot how lovely that ink is, so smooth-writing and a little shady with some sheen.
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Feb 28, 2024 21:52
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effika posted:I use my baby snot sucker very frequently for cleaning pens. I don't use anything special for a cleaning solution so I'll let others speak to that. The kits i've seen include a form of that thing. What a versatile tool. Many thanks.
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Feb 28, 2024 22:03
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PuttyKnife posted:I think i'm in the market for a cleaning kit for fountain pens. Most pen cleaning solutions are not that complicated, so you can mix them up yourself. The classic one is 1:10 ammonia in water and a few drops of dish detergent. For $2.50 you can get a half gallon of ammonia at the grocery store -- that will last you a century of pen cleaning. I've seen propylene glycol and ethoxylated alcohols as ingredients in cleaning solutions before, but I suspect they're mostly being used as surfactants; dish soap will work fine in their stead. I have a bottle of rapido-eze around here somewhere but it doesn't seem to work any better than the homemade stuff. You don't need to use pen cleaning solution every time. It helps, but if you're just switching from blue to black instead of green to pink, or if the pen has been in continuous use and hasn't had a chance to dry out, water is generally fine. I have an ultrasonic cleaner, and it works extremely well at vibrating all the ink out of the little fins in the feed, but it isn't totally necessary, especially if you're sticking with the same sort of colors. I made my most useful pen cleaning tool myself: I cut the back end off an empty ink cartridge and epoxied it onto a 20ml syringe. With that plugged onto the pen, I can pump water in and out at high speed and pressure and flush the whole thing super fast. I made several of them -- one for each style of cartridge my pens accept. They work great. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 00:59
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Sagebrush posted:I made my most useful pen cleaning tool myself: I cut the back end off an empty ink cartridge and epoxied it onto a 20ml syringe. With that plugged onto the pen, I can pump water in and out at high speed and pressure and flush the whole thing super fast. I made several of them -- one for each style of cartridge my pens accept. They work great. These are really handy. Normal blunt tipped needles are also good for getting into small spaces like converters or eyedropper barrels.
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Feb 29, 2024 02:54
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I just have a cheap little sonic cleaner and a blunt tipped syringe that do a really good job for pen cleaning and ink swapping.
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Feb 29, 2024 03:23
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Dad Hominem posted:These are really handy. Normal blunt tipped needles are also good for getting into small spaces like converters or eyedropper barrels. Yeah, I have a big bag of blunt needles. There are tons of projects where you need to move around a small amount of liquid and/or inject it into a tiny spot and, well, that's what they're for. And I am a weirdo who doesn't like using converters "properly" because I hate sticking my whole pen into a bottle of ink, so I refill converters or empty cartridges with a syringe too.
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Feb 29, 2024 05:20
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Sagebrush posted:I made my most useful pen cleaning tool myself: I cut the back end off an empty ink cartridge and epoxied it onto a 20ml syringe. With that plugged onto the pen, I can pump water in and out at high speed and pressure and flush the whole thing super fast. I made several of them -- one for each style of cartridge my pens accept. They work great. You can get rubber bulb syringes everywhere and they work just as well. Edit: Also for some eye candy  Parker Slim Royal Challenger. 1939 manufacture, excellent condition. Royal Challengers are immediately recognizable due to the rare herringbone-pattern celluloid bodies. The black end cap is a little odd for the design, but it is original. grack fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 22:03
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lol https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1763694038866432356?s=46
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Mar 2, 2024 06:12
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teethgrinder posted:lol lol indeed. Although the big lamy news should really be "mitsubishi buys lamy." Maybe in a few years their nibs'll be more consistently sized (or whatever the recent complaints about their nibs are).
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Mar 2, 2024 07:37
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The new one looks better tbh.
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Mar 2, 2024 08:55
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Can you all think of a reason why, with the same ink and pen, a notebook would have terrible bleed-through on page 1 and apparent rhodia-level resistance to the same issue about 15 pages later? I guess there must just be a difference in quality among the pages used in this notebook, but frankly I find it a little bizarre that it could vary this much. At its worst it was making me not use the back of the pages and at its best it's the best paper i've tried (writepads notebook, by the way).
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Mar 2, 2024 09:01
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Heath posted:The new one looks better tbh. Both are good tbh sharkmafia posted:Can you all think of a reason why, with the same ink and pen, a notebook would have terrible bleed-through on page 1 and apparent rhodia-level resistance to the same issue about 15 pages later? Poor quality control at the paper mill.
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Mar 2, 2024 11:12
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Speaking of drama, it sounds like Nakaya's production was severely impacted by the earthquake on Jan 1, judging from the news entries on their website.
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Mar 2, 2024 11:15
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Lamy 2000s on sale on Amazon. Finally bought a fine nib. 👌🏻
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Mar 2, 2024 12:04
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DeusIgnis posted:Lamy 2000s on sale on Amazon. Finally bought a fine nib. 👌🏻 Lol $225 CAD as opposed to $300. My original one was $190 from a high end store. And I managed to lose it, fell out of my pocket in a mall. Replaced it for $90 on ebay. But thanks for the tip. What I did order is a matching Lamy 2000 mechanical pencil for $75. Interestingly come in both 5 and 7mm variants.
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Mar 2, 2024 14:44
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Apropos to our discussion about pen costs a while back, came across this ad while browsing a 1944 Life Magazine, as one does.  $12.50 for a Parker 51 "reservation" order. You couldn't even buy one because the entire production was going to war supplies. That's $221.56 in today money for a pre-order with no defined delivery date.
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Mar 4, 2024 18:24
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