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↑ Just use them, they'll probably get back to flowing normally if you write a few pages.Kerbtree posted:Parker washable blue is insipid. Blue-black was my daily driver for mass notes at uni, though. Are those notes still legible? Because as pleasant a color as it is, it has a real bad habit of fading to nothingness after a few years of light. Quink's best quality is that you can probably find it in any staples or whatever anywhere in the US. Otherwise it's basically like every other pen maker's ink, in that it's inoffensive and can be relied upon to work in drat near anything just fine. Worst ink I ever got was Noodler's Dostoevski. It basically worked like that MB ink on the last page, where it was drat near illegible out of a fountain pen. Makes for an acceptable highlighter, but I don't use highlighters, so that's tragic. Of course, I swapped its cap for a broken noodler's one ages ago, so I assume the bottle's mostly dried up by now. I haven't checked in years.
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Feb 10, 2021 15:35
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bulletsponge13 posted:Ok, so is there a sealant or something I can put over non-water resistant inks to preserve them for modge podge/ future art shenanigans? Hairspray or rubbing a candle over it are the usual go-tos, I think?
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Mar 10, 2021 03:31
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I also got a fancy-colored safari, and so I would like to slightly retract my complaints about lamy blue. Either my memory is quite bad, or they managed to make it markedly less pale and pathetic looking in the last 12 years. That said, I'll have to wait until another pen is empty so I can ink up my other safari and check, but this "EF" nib looks an awful lot like the "F" I have. Of course, I could just be misremembering how wide that one is, too. It's just one of those things that reminds me why I've mostly bought japanese/chinese pens over the last few years.
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Mar 16, 2021 06:03
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It's the obvious place to go after your fish usb stick(twitter).
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Apr 29, 2021 02:45
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Sankis posted:Isn't the Safari aimed toward young writers in Europe (where they still teach kids to write with fountain pens) I imagine you're thinking of the ABC (pretty sure that's what Lamy calls their kid's pen?). It's rather like the pelikano in that it's colorful and so-on. Although I see where you're coming from, with the triangular grip and all, the Safari is more "the sweetest '80's industrial design. Antifa Turkeesian posted:I take a lot of marginal notes in books with varying paper quality, and I find the safari performs best for leaving clear notes in the cramped and tiny hand that's necessary for that kind of writing. I wish any of my Safaris were good for that. I have very distinct memories of writing half my notes with the pen inverted so I could actually read what I'd written down in class. That's more a job for a pilot penmanship, or any other deskpen with an ef/xf.
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May 1, 2021 04:40
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Thanks, I appreciate it. I'm not picky about colors for myself, just trying to find something that suits my friend I'm thinking about colors and materials and whatnot. I feel like I swapped a fude nib one and a regular nib one's nibs, so it's certainly possible. However, I also feel like I've read that JOWO nibs aren't quite a drop-in replacement (different arcs in the nib, perhaps?). Once upon a time, I recall having read that there was a different feed design that had better flow for fude nibs (the ones with a circle on the underside of the feed), but that should be irrelevant unless you're getting a fude/bent nib one. I imagine that if it were simple to do, then goulet would just replace the jinhao nibs with jowos as a matter of course (and to justify their pricing). But considering that most jinhaos are less than $5, it's probably easier to just buy a few and use the ones that write poorly as body/cap parts. But personally, I haven't really had issues with any of them, apart from some of the plastic-bodied ones being fragile. If you're just getting a 1xx model, those are not plastic, and there's no real issue unless you get a crap nib that can't be sorted by reseating it or whatever.
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May 30, 2021 02:20
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I'm sure he means "the one that'll come in July." Incidentally, is there a way to (I guess) pull a slip cap down (besides like, a die/tap/bolt extractor or whatever)? This Wing Sung 308 is all very nice, except the cap doesn't actually stay on. Presumably the slip cap is too far up in the cap for it to grab onto where it's meant to (although looking in, it seems to be entirely smooth so I'm not sure how that's meant to actually work), which is somewhat annoying. f.e. Does noodler's even make glitter inks? That doesn't seem like the sort of gimmick that'd interest the man, unless he could somehow work in glitter that shows up under UV lamps or something.
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Jul 8, 2021 19:29
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Keetron posted:the 60ml or the 15ml? Well, it either fell off a low bed, or an ordinary roof. I'm kinda curious as to what you'd have to type to get centimeters to autocorrect to decimeters. Out of curiosity, anyone have a Metro Stub (or a pen with whichever nib that is -- a CM, I think)? I'm curious as to how "not 1.0mm" it is, because I just looked and a freshly filled kaweco F was putting down about a 1mm line and that was entirely too wide for my writing. I'd sorta like to try a small stub/ci, but I'd rather not then end up sitting on a pen I can't use because I can't bring myself to write large enough for it to be legible.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:23
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I thought the euros used int'l standard, us/jp use pilot. Then again, I also thought they specifically used the MR name for the euro ones, but it seems now everything is technically an MR Metropolitan, so who knows. Also it seems the us ones at least come with a converter (although I feel like it's actually meant specifically for cleaning, and pilot wants you to buy a con-40 — it'll still work, but it's just a simple squeeze bulb/aero-whatever, so you can't actually see the ink level)
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Aug 22, 2021 20:18
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sb hermit posted:I remember a class in high school where all papers were required to be written in pen because pencil was too light. As a young student, I didn't see how it could be that bad. As an old man, I'd slap younger self on the back of the head and tell them to just do it. I can't see myself writing anything in pencil (much less finding an actual pencil) unless I really had to. Like for a board game or something. I'd agree with you, but pencil's more likely to stay on the paper. The only real legibility issues with pencils are from using light ones. (Although honestly, besides math, I'm pretty sure using a pencil was just assumed to be a thing you weren't doing past grade school). Do those fixions actually work better than the old papermate eraseables (or the sharpie ones, for that matter)? Because goddamn, those were all sorta poo poo.
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Aug 25, 2021 07:56
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Certainly not for $200.
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Aug 31, 2021 03:33
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When you think about it, he's ahead of the curve, since he was shouting about his political bullshit well before it was /an thing/ that internet peopole did. Incidentally, someone refresh my memory: legal lapis, legal blue, and at least one other name were "exclusive" noodler's colors, but they were all the same. What was the third?
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Sep 20, 2021 13:05
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Rand Brittain posted:Is there a particular point when you're supposed to empty out a pen that has ink in it with the "don't let me dry out in your pen" trait? My TWSBI Eco holds so much ink and has continued to write for so long that it worries me a little, since I've never actually emptied it out to wash it. Am I right to think it will be okay as long as I keep writing with it every other day or so? Generally, if you're not leaving a pen to sit for weeks with ink in it, it'll be fine. But some inks are more finicky or likely to dry out and gum things up (and it feels like this is worse in something like a pocket pen, with a tiny nib/feed). I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "don't let me dry out," though. Some inks'll get gummy or evaporate, some'll just stain the converter or whatever; I'm sure someone'll come up with a more correct answer than "you're probably fine" if you say what the ink is. Sidenote:  That's what I get for using copy/filler paper instead of something nice, I guess.
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Nov 5, 2021 16:50
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taiyoko posted:I've come to realize the reason I'm always getting ink on my fingers at work is that there's like a little ring of seepage around where the nib and feed meet the body on my lamy safari. Is there anything I can do about this? If you mean the little ring below the section, that's where the pen clicks into the cap. That'll inevitably get ink on it from you capping and uncapping the pen, so that much is unavoidable. However, if your fingers are down there, you're also Holding It Wrong™. But seriously, there's no real reason to hold the pen that far down, your fingers are meant to be above the taper at the bottom of the section, not on it. And if you do that, you're not going to find little lines of ink on your fingers.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:28
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Yeah, so do I from time to time. If you're incredibly fastidious about cleaning out the cap (specifically the little inner cap) and being very careful to not touch that inner cap when you cap the pen you can reduce the amount of ink that'll end up there, but it's more or less inevitable. The only way to avoid that is to just not touch it, which means holding the pen higher (or not worrying too much about the little lines, I guess).
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Nov 8, 2021 23:35
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Argas posted:Anyone have experience with FPR's pens? I got a Jaipur to compare to my incredibly cursed Konrad and while I am glad it has no catastrophically leaked yet, it writes notably wetter to the point where there's enough ink pooling to make it feather noticeably on Rhodia notepads. I have a guru, which is adjustable the way an ahab is. If the nib and feed are friction fit/come out easy you can try adjusting the distance between the end of the feed and the end of the nib — further is drier. Don't know if that's possible (or wise) with a jaipur, though. Sidenote: got a jinhao 100. looks nice, has an incredibly tiny sweet spot, which is making me realize i seem to rotate my pen a bit while writing. I wonder what would be easier to fix.
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Jan 12, 2022 01:17
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tater_salad posted:I'll be buying one of those Jinhao 100 Centennial pens they're proably not great but The rainbow one sure is pretty. It's also super hard to find but whatever. I found on on aliexpress and can't not order it. I've got one. I only inked it the once so far, but it was annoyingly picky about rotational angles. Eventually I'll try another type of ink in it to see if it just hates iroshizuku, but I haven't managed to empty enough pens to ink another one up yet… Certainly looks nice, though. Hell of a lot cheaper than a Duofold, too.
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Apr 27, 2022 03:48
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Rand Brittain posted:I can understand the appeal, but right now I'm writing a role-playing game and amusing myself by taking notes in the seven relevant colors, so my most immediate need is to have one really good ink in all seven major colors. Right now I just need a good purple, so I'm looking at J. Herbin's pansy violet. If it doesn't have to be violet (or otherwise especially vibrant), Poussiere de Lune is the correct choice.
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May 24, 2022 15:52
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Prera EF.
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Sep 25, 2022 10:13
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Pretty sure tachikawa or someone makes disposable fountain pens that use g-nibs, I've seen them on jetpens for like $6–10, I think? Probably worth a whirl instead of one of those fountain pens that use them, if only because they're cheaper. Can't speak to how well they work, I've not bought one because it would end up like the brush pen I bought on a whim, where I use it for a bit and then it vanishes somewhere.
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Oct 23, 2022 08:56
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Pretty sure decimos are twist instead of push/knock/click, as well. Also vanishing point is just a cooler name.
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Nov 6, 2022 05:54
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madmatt112 posted:First I’ve ever heard someone talk about a fountain pen nib only lasting a month or two as if that were normal. What’s up with these nibs? Are you just rough on them, or is it their construction?? Dip pen nibs are usually just steel, even if you don't manage to wear it down (which you will, because I'm pretty sure those are untipped) it'll start to rust. That's why they're replaceable in the first place. Heath posted:Please tell me you didn't pay a ton for it. You can fit a Zebra G into a $3 Jinhao pen and it will work. I've done it. But I see people selling them as if they're super expensive flex pens for ridiculous markups all the time. Did that require bending/cutting, or are they actually at the right arc/size to just pop onto the feed and fit in the section?
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Feb 20, 2023 06:43
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They are quite proud of their d-bottles, with convenient pen-rest, yeah. Tipping them is only really annoying when the bottle's real empty (like anything that isn't a vial, really), and they look nice. Perfectly acceptable tradeoff. Anyway I think the generally accepted blackest black is Aurora. Pilot black is what I use, though. If you get the 70?ml one, it has a neat little mini-vial thing in it to solve the very problem you're complaining about, too! It's maybe not the absolute darkest (I use fine pens), but it's definitely black, and not just super dark purple or something. Does get kinda feathery on some random looseleaf I was using, though.
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Mar 13, 2023 03:12
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I had this pentel brush pen, and it worked perfectly nicely. Unfortunately it went walkabout at some point. Just last week I got one of these ??? brush pens off ali. It also works perfectly fine, although I feel like it doesn't come to quite as fine a point as the pentel did; however this could be a difference between the (supposedly) carbon black ink the pentel came with vs. the pilot black (fountain) that I put in this new one. To be honest, I don't think there's going to be much of a performance difference between brush pens/water brushes. Provided they have actual bristles and aren't just a soft felt point, they're probably all going to perform more or less the same, with maybe a little difference in responsiveness and the bulk of the difference being how well the body feels in your hand. But I'm also not an artist or anything, I just use these to badly scrawl things. I also picked up a Jinhao 80. It very much looks like a lamy 2000, until you see the section, and it also uses that lamy-esque squared nib you see on a lot of chinese pens these days. It's absurdly light and slightly unbalanced posted, but it writes rather nicely. Probably the most interesting thing is that the nibs aren't just lamy-like, they're sized the same way; I got an EF and it's putting out a line about the same as my F Prera.
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May 16, 2023 23:00
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Pigsfeet on Rye posted:Huh, maybe the person stopped using a fountain pen in the 60s and just assumed that fountain pens and supplies went the way of the dodo. Most people probably walk into the pen aisle in whatever shop, grab whatever pen they're used to, and then move on. They don't look around and marvel at the fact that staples has bottles of quink or whatever.
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Aug 6, 2023 19:35
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Heath posted:They're usually not especially prominently displayed, either. Probably the most prominently displayed things (before they suddenly started putting cheap cross/parkers out on shelves a decade or so ago) would've been parker/aurora/cross cartridges with the other pen refills. Definitely not something that would stand out unless you were looking for them, besides perhaps noticing that they're different from the regular metal pen inserts.
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Aug 6, 2023 19:48
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SixteenShells posted:yeah i think that's how the marketing copy goes but that also feels like... some real marketing bullshit. No, that's the point. You're meant to fiddle with it until it writes the way you'd like, and it doesn't require anything beyond some fingers to do so. I've got an FPR pen that's the same way. The real issue with the pen (in my case an Ahab), is that a cruft posted:Is this the thread that got me all hot about fountain pens years ago? I think it might be. In the other picture, the endcap on the cap is flush, and here it isn't. Are the threads hosed or something? Assuming there's just a hole behind it, all that extra airflow is definitely contributing to it drying out so quickly. Caps generally aren't actually airtight, but it does seem like that's drying out especially quickly, even for a desert.
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Aug 24, 2023 23:29
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Coxswain Balls posted:I have a confession to make: I've mostly switched over to mechanical pencils for school since I finally got into a groove that works with quickly and effectively getting stuff down during speedy lectures. I'm still getting a lot of use out of my fine-tipped Metropolitan since it works well in lab data books that have to be all in ink. Right now I'm using Papier Plume Calle Real which looks nice an professional while still being a striking blue. I'm thinking of changing the colour up whenever I move on to another experiment. I rather liked my pentel graphgear 1000, until it went walkabout. I also got a pentel [fine?] kerry. Doesn't come in a ton of sizes like the graphgear, but having a cap is pretty nice. Don't quite remember how the eraser was on the graphgear, the kerry's got a tiny one. That's never really bothered me, those erasers are always pretty crap and carrying around a proper eraser isn't exactly a huge imposition. Glad the kuru toga's working well for you — mine's pretty much just a regular pencil, because unsurprisingly if you just write in cursive, there's no kuru-ing to be had. Then again, it doesn't seem to rotate much even if I'm just writing numbers, so perhaps I just have too much of a light touch to get it to work properly……
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Oct 5, 2023 07:21
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cruft posted:I said I'd give it to someone if nobody else expressed interest, but you just did that, so it's yours if you PM me your address! I'd like the turquoise one, but I don't have pms. Mad Hamish posted:Just how much fiddling do they require, anyway? Like, what counts as fiddling? There's a few degrees of fiddling you can do. The most basic one is just pulling the nib and feed and adjusting the distance between the tips of them. Further away is drier, generally. If it's a flexible steel nib, that also means it'll flex more (and probably railroad a ton). This is the fiddling the little infosheet you'd get with the pen says to do, and generally you'd just find a suitable setting, and then note the number of fins you can see on the feed, in case you want to take the nib and feed out later for cleaning or whatever. It's easy, there's usually a slot in the section for the nib, you just have to worry about having the feed centered right, and your hands will be covered in ink. Next is heat-seating the feed. I never felt the need to do this to anything, so as far as I know it's a bit like moulding a mouthguard, but for the feed in relation to the nib, rather than a mouthguard to your teeth. Since I never looked into it, I have no idea how it works to not just end up too tight and not let any ink through. But people seem to swear by it, and I can see why it might be necessary if you've got a hand-cut feed or something. The last level of fiddling involves cutting into the body of the nib. Removing material from below the shoulders makes it more flexible, sensible enough. Personally, I'd sooner just go to an art store and buy some nice thin steel dip nibs and use those, rather than spend ages dremelling bits out of the markedly thicker stainless nib in an attempt to make it as flexible as a gold or thin steel one is. But it does seem to work, to a point. I doubt you're going to end up with anything quite as flexible, though. Incidentally, thinking of all this reminded me that this tiny FPR pen I have also wants a degree of fiddling (it's also a bit more flexible, because it's got a smaller nib, I guess). I haven't heard anyone mention FPR in ages though — did people just get tired of the novelty of a pen that smells weird until you leave it in a windowsill for a week, or what?
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Jan 21, 2024 00:20
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cruft posted:Let's fix that! Send an email to somethingawful.lent598@passmail.net and we'll get you taken care of. Alright, mail sent. Thanks again! Sankis posted:I like my FPR pen but I suspect part of it is just Chinese pens getting incredibly good in the past few years. They're fine pens but that price range has gotten way more solid and reliable overall. That's a good point, I'd forgotten they were also generally liked for being cheap. I guess after the few months where people cared about  vegetal resin they didn't have terribly much going for them beyond being cheap and offering "flexible" nibs. And most of their pens aren't really cheap, either. Certainly not compared to aliexpress prices. Although now that I've looked, they do have a nicely wide range of nib options, so that's neat.
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Jan 23, 2024 02:11
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Rand Brittain posted:The Metro is an amazing cheap pen and it really makes me wish Pilot had like, any mid-grade pens. If you're absolutely dead-set on buying a pilot for between $50–$100, there's the cavalier, if you can find someplace that has them. The prera's real nice though.
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Feb 3, 2024 01:50
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Rudeboy Detective posted:Seconding the Kaweco Sport love. Lucky, mine's been a pain since whenever I got it, and would only write reliably on horribly cheap paper. Imagine my surprise when I inked it up on a whim a week ago and it was suddenly working smooth and skip-free even on nice paper! I guess it just really likes eclait du saphir better than any other inks I've tried in it. Also since mine's ancient, I've got the awful bulb converter and when I was idly looking at stuff on jetpens, I saw a note that the newer plunger one may or may not fit sports made before 2016, for some reason. In any event: coop52 posted:Broke down and got the Kaweco Sport plus 6 more ink samples. They should be here this weekend. Hope you get a good one (or maybe they've finally sorted out their nibs?)
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Feb 8, 2024 01:24
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cruft posted:I promise I will get y'all's pens shipped out. It's just a weird time right now. Mine showed up too. Thanks again! Ravus Ursus posted:You dare? In this house? A rollerball is just a fountain pen that had a tragic accident. No need to draw attention to it.
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Feb 21, 2024 03:36
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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. They aren't (weren't?) that uncommon, at least for european/american brands like parker, sheaffer, or cross. They'd generally have a ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and possibly pencil version of whatever line, sometimes sold together as a gift set or whatever. Don't know if they still do, I haven't really had any reason to poke around any of their websites recently. I feel like the ones that didn't just use rollerball refills/inserts would just use a converter? At least I feel like that's what I've seen from a few more fountain pen-centric brands like lamy or whatever. They're rather like brush pens in that way (also in that if you poke around ali you'll find the exact same body but with a brush/fountain/rollerball tip). Anyway rollerballs must be fine, because back in the dark ages, when pen stores existed and mailed out catalogs, there'd always be a sizeable section for retro51 pens. Don't think they ever made a fountain version of anything, which is a shame. They usually had pretty interesting designs. Also the pilot v5 is the best pen you can buy in any regular-rear end store, and that's a rollerball. QED.
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Feb 21, 2024 17:05
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Pretty whiz-bang stuff, a pen you can just pick up and use like a pencil, but with the 'permanence' of ink. Add in the cost and it's not really too surprising that they became wildly popular.Mad Hamish posted:Well I'm interested to learn that that ridiculous Bic Pens For Women thing from a few years ago wasn't as new as I thought it was. Usually the mens/womens pen thing is just a question of the size of the pen, I assume what you're talking about is something like 'this pen is pink,' which is a pretty different sort of marketing thing.
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Feb 21, 2024 19:28
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grack posted:I have owned several Retro51 fountain pens. 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?
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Feb 21, 2024 20:52
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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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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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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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Chip McFuck posted:The Bluedew and the Osprey pens both use rebadged Zebra G dip pen nibs. These nibs are great for inking or lettering in short bursts, but I wouldn't want to use one for a long writing session. As they're originally dip nibs, they don't have any tipping and can be incredibly scratchy to write with. Do they swap out easily at least? Dip pen nibs are very much wear items, it would be pretty terrible if they were a pain to get out. Not that I've tried terribly many steel 'flex' nibs, but they're really more like what would've been called a semiflex back when they were a thing. They are, at least, cheaper to get a hold of than say, pilot's soft nibs (which are quite nice to write with, but also won't vary as much as those steel fuckers).
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Mar 8, 2024 00:01
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