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I've never tried a glass one before either. I'm considering ordering one of the ones from the Goulets as something cheap to experiment with now!
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Apr 6, 2013 15:24
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You shouldn't really leave ink in a pen for more than a few weeks at a time if it's not being used. If left for too long it can corrode parts and gum up the feed and filling mechanism.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:04
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Leaving inky caps in water overnight won't do any harm at all and should help get rid of most of the ink in there. Even better is if you have an ultrasonic cleaner as that'll get all the ink out of the smallest gaps in the caps. In fact the only pens that won't mind being soaked are ones made out of casein, and no modern pen makers seem to use it anymore.
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Apr 10, 2013 11:46
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TWSBI really have the best customer service of any company I've ever dealt with, you can tell they're trying to get a really good reputation around their brand! Does anyone have any experience with stylographs? I bought a 92 year old Onoto Ink Pencil the other day and got it this morning. It's in excellent condition, but is missing its clip and it looks like the seals inside will need replacing, but that should be an interesting project for this week. It's a gorgeous pen, the ink window in the barrel has a lattice pattern on the inside which I've never seen on a pen before.
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Apr 16, 2013 09:14
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So I went to the Northern Pen Show yesterday. It was the first pen show I've been too and it was a great experience. It's the largest UK pen show but is small compared to some of the ones in the US like Atlanta and Chicago shows. The number of pens there though was staggering, some of the dealers had literally hundreds of new and vintage pens for sale. Every type and manufacturer was represented, from the lowliest off-brand pen from the 40s, up to a load of limited editions. Favourites include a vintage Barclays sterling silver pen, a load of MB 146 Solitaires including a solid gold one, a MB Pope Julius II, and a couple of Visconti Salvador Dalis. I was never a fan of the Italian pen manufacturers until yesterday, when I got to try out pens from Visconti, Omas, and Aurora, including some top-of-the-line pens from each manufacturer. I'm glad I didn't have much money with me or I'd be broke right now. I had my eye on a limited edition blue demonstrator Omas 360 which is one of the most comfortable pens I've ever written with, and a Visconti Master Opera Crystal with blue flecks which was dirt cheap and I'm kinda regretting not buying. However I did walk away with a pen I never knew existed, let alone I wanted. An Aurora Hastil. It was the first writing instrument to be exhibited in the MOMA New York, and is really elegantly simple. I got the one with 14k nib and ecosteel diamond thingy body. I think it may have replaced my M90 as my favourite pen. As a side note, I'd be up for writing some reviews of some pens, and if anyone else might want to do it we could have links to them in the OP for quick reference? Not sure if anyone is up for that, but it might be a good idea.
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Apr 22, 2013 21:28
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Yoshi Jjang posted:I just Googled all these pens you've brought up, never hearing any of them before, and holy Jesus, they're all like above $500. Ok I'll try and answer all the points in your post as well as I can. Firstly, let me just say I'm just a lowly university student, living off the student loan I'm fortunately eligible for. I don't come from a particularly well off background, but I have gotten good enough at budgeting that I can afford to make a couple of large value purchases a year without affecting other aspects of my life, like being able to eat  Fountain pens to me are just like any other hobby. Previously I spent my money on building PCs, and more recently I bought a lot of gear for archery. I put pens into the same category. I've also never bought a pen for it's RRP, I will only buy it when there's a decent discount on it. Those pens I mentioned may all cost over $500, but that is at retail prices. I've never bought a pen at a price anywhere near that as I just don't have the money. With that Visconti Master Crystal I said was "dirt cheap", it retails for about £750 and usually you'd be hard pressed to find one for much cheaper than that. It was on sale for £200. Compared to the actual value of the item it was dirt cheap, but in the grand scheme of things it's still an expensive purchase, so it's how you define the word cheap which would have any bearing on if you thought it was a good purchase or not. What makes higher end pens more expensive is obviously the material used (whether thats precious metals like gold or silver, or overlays etc.), and the craftsmanship that has gone into it. Most of the pens that I own have something unique about them which draws me to them. For example, my M90 has a nib that is just an extension of the body, and the Hastil is made of a unique steel and each part of the pen is specifically made to complement the other parts. For example the cap off my pen may not fit another Hastil because each one is made as a separate entity. While I would say that I collect fountain pens, I wouldn't say that I'm a collector. Collector implies that they sit in display cases without ever being inked, but I will put a pen into rotation as soon as I buy it. I don't see the point in a pen that isn't used, because at the end of the day it is a tool for writing and I see them as pointless if you don't use a tool for its intended purpose. I'll happily use my most expensive pens daily, I'll take them to uni and write notes. The pens I buy aren't anything to do with image at all. While people who know something about fountain pens will be able to appreciate the unique parts of each pen, most of the people I encounter day to day won't be able to tell me a thing about them. I buy pens for personal reasons, not to impress anyone else. I like simple and unobtrusive designs. Obviously there are people out there who buy pens for the benefit of others, just like people who like to sit in a busy area in their Ferrari while never taking it above 60mph. Personally, I think my handwriting is awful, and I'm working on trying to improve it. Having a nice tool for that makes it all the more enjoyable. I love writing in itself. I think it's amazing that people can express their thoughts and have a permanent copy of them on a piece of paper. I personally think that writing is an artform in all its permutations and I don't think I'll ever tire of it. I love calligraphy and I'm very jealous of people that are able to do it, as I'm not very good at it at all and don't really have the spare time to practice it at the moment. At the end of the day, a cheap 10 pack of Chinese pens will probably write extremely well, and may even write better than a more expensive pen like in your case. But I like the extra small things you get with spending some more money at the end of the day. Whether that be a more exotic metal or nib material, a more complex design, or better writing performance. It's a very personal hobby, much more so than any others I've been a part of, just because it is so subjective. While one person may like the way one pen writes, another may outright hate it. Same with the pen design, same with the pen material etc etc. There are people out there that are willing to pay a lot more than me for pens and I personally can't understand what would drive someone to want to spend $30,000 on a pen, but different strokes for different folks I guess. Hopefully that'll help you understand where I'm coming from more clearly.
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Apr 23, 2013 09:08
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And you thought you would've bought more than just the one on a whim?
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They seem to be non-branded pens which I wouldn't bother with at all. The Jinhao/Baoer ones are usually a bit better but they are still very hit and miss at least in my experience. You can get Chinese pens for much cheaper off of Ebay usually so I wouldn't deal with DX unless you really like the look of one of those pens.
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Apr 24, 2013 21:08
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After buying the Aurora Hastil a few weeks ago, I've been really interested in looking for other slim, metal pens. I know Sheaffer did a Targa Slim in stainless steel, and there's the Lamy Pur which is aluminium. Does anyone know of any others like these?
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May 13, 2013 18:46
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iostream.h posted:Faber Castell Ambition. I have one and absolutely love it. It's a hard nib without a lot of feel or feedback but is great for writing on crappy paper or carbon copies and the like. Looks beautiful in my opinion. Oh that's really nice. The section looks really short though, do you hold it by the section or the barrel? Was looking at the Cross Classic Century too, that fits with what I like.
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May 13, 2013 19:11
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Ed Mungo posted:What do y'all keep your pens and pen accessories in? I use an Ikea KASSETT box to put my stuff in. It's pretty sturdy, cheap as hell, and holds 4 bottles of ink, about 30 ink samples, pen repair stuff, and 8 or so pens. It's not full yet either.
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May 14, 2013 18:34
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Eikre posted:A somewhat ancillary request for information here, but not really off-topic: I want some good-quality graph paper, in the dimentions of a writing pad, in loose-leaf with two holes punched in the top margin. I've never seen graph paper with holes in the top margin, do you mean top with regards to portrait or landscape layout? The best graph paper I've used came from my university shop, so if you've got a uni/college local to you I'd try there. Some of the larger Staples stores have a good selection of graph paper. I'm not sure of the brand, but the one with yellow lines was better than the one with blue markings.
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May 15, 2013 15:46
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How's this? If that't no good then I don't think what you're looking for exists!
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May 15, 2013 16:47
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Oops didn't see it was A3. Anyway, you can get the A4 and it's the exact same thing, off of Amazon. A3 isn't that big, just a couple pieces of A4 stuck together. It's definitely not a standard size though, most paper pads are A4 in Europe in my experience.
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May 15, 2013 19:40
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saphron posted:I've actually had this problem too and have been wondering whether my Metropolitan was a lemon. It's fussier about inks than I would have liked -- I tested it out twice with Terre de Feu, but it skips here and there. Even Noodler's Black takes a few scratches to start up (which was not the case with the Safari), but once it does it writes like a charm. It's still a great deal of a pen, of course...but this thread has me looking at the 580 now. This poo poo is a goddamn rabbit hole. The most purple ink I've used is Iroshizoku Murasaki-Shikibu. It's almost the purply colour you see when you look at one of those UV lights. Very well behaved, and shades nicely. Expensive though.
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May 22, 2013 15:05
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404notfound posted:Goulet Pens apparently partnered with Monteverde to design this pen: http://www.gouletpens.com/Monteverde_Invincia_Deluxe_Nighthawk_p/mv41350.htm Oh wow that's sexy. I love the colour of Ruthenium plating. Not a fan of the matte black clip though, can't help think it'd look better in silver, but then I guess it wouldn't be a 'stealth' pen.
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May 22, 2013 18:39
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Obligatory Toast, how is that Ahab you're using? I decided Noodler's Turquoise Eel is my favourite ink ever now and I've been curious about the Ahab for a while. I thought as long as I was gonna put an order in to the Goulets I'd take an opportunity to maybe get a new pen too  Edit: Also, recommending Aurora Black as the perfect black. It's a completely neutral black which is nice and is extremely black which makes a change compared to most black inks.
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May 29, 2013 14:07
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It's really not an issue to be honest. It's not really something that occurs accidentally.
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May 29, 2013 19:17
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It looks pretty dark red to me too. Y'know, almost like burgundy .
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May 29, 2013 21:08
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Yeah 99% of "black" inks are actually nowhere near black. Most of them look grey, and others may have slight red or blue tints to them. There are a handful of completely flat black inks though, like Aurora Black and Noodlers Heart of Darkness.
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Jun 7, 2013 11:02
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Your Granddad's pen there definitely isn't a Targa. It's a Sheaffer PFM, or Pen For Men. It has the same sort of inlaid nib as the Targa, but is larger. Men don't use small pens, duh! It uses Sheaffers ingenious snorkel filling mechanism, designed so you don't get ink on your fingers when filling. Targas don't use the snorkel, they're too slim to hold all the parts needed. You have some gorgeous pens there, I love Targas and snorkel fillers.
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Jun 22, 2013 09:53
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loving hell why did you link those stone pens. I've wanted a lapis pen for ages and now I'm trying to justify buying one. Y'all are just a bunch of enablers. Also I've been looking at some calligraphy and really want to try it. Does anyone have any recommendations for a flexy pen that isn't one of those £5 calligraphy sets you can get?
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Jun 29, 2013 09:24
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blowfish posted:What kind of calligraphy? I'm more interested in the Spencerian/Copperplate side of calligraphy over the stuff you get when using an italic nib. I've got a TWSBI with a 1.5mm italic, but with my handwriting it doesn't look that special in my opinion. That's great info about the dip nibs, I'll have a look into those. When looking on ebay I kept seeing boxes of dip nibs going for dirt cheap so I'll look through them and see if there's anything special. Omas do some semi-flex nibs on some of their higher end pens which are absolutely fantastic, but I'd rather go the cheap way then spend $500 on an Omas 360 I've seen a few Watermans that people have bought that ended up having almost perfect full-flex nibs on them, but from what I hear that's mainly down to luck than any educated buying as it's apparently quite hard to find decent vintage flex fountain pens these days for whatever reason. Back to ebay for me!
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Jun 29, 2013 19:24
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Teach posted:
Hey cool that looks like a Parker Slimfold? I've got a red one and it's got one of the smoothest nibs of all my pens. Pretty fine, nice and springy and not too wet. It's a shame yours doesn't write too well as they're great little pens that can take a beating.
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Jul 6, 2013 21:03
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xilixliadon posted:Anybody know offhand which parker this is? I believe that's a Parker 45, first introduced in the 60s and named for a .45 revolver.
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Jul 17, 2013 08:49
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laertes22 posted:I had no idea that abrasive paper could wear down a nib. I frequently have to write on manilla folders at work, and I had been using my fountain pens for this. Should I stop using them for this? Do I risk damaging or ruining the pen and/or nib? I really wouldn't worry too much about it wearing down a functional nib. The defect that can cause baby-bottoming with a nib is very tiny and the brown paper is just abrasive enough to fix this. On a decent nib writing on a folder isn't likely to have much of an effect at all. The biggest problem you'll get writing on manilla is getting fibres stuck in the nib that have to be picked out now and then, otherwise you're safe!
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Aug 26, 2013 20:43
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Welsper posted:So I got a broad nib from gouletpens to replace the medium that came on my VAC700. The goulet #6 nib body seems very slightly wider than the default TWSBI nib body, which seems to increase the distance between the tines somewhat when fitted. Looks pretty great to me, but then I love really wet nibs. My Waterman Hemisphere writes so wet that Waterman Blue comes out almost black .That's a really nice red too, blood-reds are the greatest.
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Sep 2, 2013 10:35
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Sarern posted:That's interesting to me, as I wish I could find more pens with the triangular grip. Are there any non-Safari/al-Star/Vista pins with such a grip? The Omas 360 has a triangular grip and cross section too. That is, if you want to jump in at the deep end with a $400 pen.
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Sep 11, 2013 16:47
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:Might be a Skripsert - did she have a case for it or have it as part of a matched pair? That's it! Man I've been trying to remember the name Skripsert all day to help identify what the pen is. Definitely sounds like a Skripsert with the 'gold mesh.'
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Sep 14, 2013 18:48
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Yeah I had a white and gold set for a while before selling it on, nice pens. I've never used a lever Sheaffer, mine have all been from the post-lever era. Currently I've got a (dead at the moment)Snorkel Crest, and a slim Targa, both great pens. Sheaffer has to be my favourite of the North American pen manufacturers.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:08
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Brightman posted:No case, and I don't remember if it was a pair, but if it was she doesn't have it's match anymore. I remember her saying it was a graduation gift from her brother. I sorta wonder if the reason I'm having trouble writing with it is because she wrote with it so much that it's used to however she writes. They did actually make some of the Triumph nibs out of a Palladium/Silver alloy but weren't marked as such. I have one in my snorkel but I think mine's Australian. They're extremely stiff nibs, which I personally quite like.
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Sep 15, 2013 12:23
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Captain Postal posted:I exaggerated a little. Some ink comes up, but the converter is probably <25% full when fully drawn. It very well may be that the pen isn't submerged enough, which comes back to me not being able to see what's happening inside the bottle and being too conservative to keep the grip clean when guessing depth. As far as I'm aware, there are only two full metal Snorkel models. There's the Masterpiece which is made of solid gold and is extremely rare, you're looking at a few thousand dollars for one, minimum. There's also a Triumph version which has a gold filled cap/barrel/clip and is also pretty rare, I've personally not seen one up for sale in the few years I've been collecting pens.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:42
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Xun posted:Any suggestions for a good slim pen? I'm thinking about moving up from my safari at some point but a lot of the suggested ones look too fat for my tiny rear end hands As for vintage stuff, the Sheaffer Targa is pretty drat slim, and the Sheaffer Targa Slim is even thinner than that, not to mention a bit cheaper.
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Sep 21, 2013 12:23
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Oh my god, I really want some of that Tomoe River paper now.  I'm heading back to university this week so the next few days will be full of getting stationary. Gotta get a big hunk of those Rhodia pads, and may just use it as an excuse to get a bunch of ink too.
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Sep 23, 2013 17:18
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milpreve posted:http://www.inknouveau.com/2012/11/pilot-metropolitan.html You can lay some tape across the top of the nib and pull it, that sometimes helps. They also sell those sticky rubber mat things you can put on your car dashboard, on some websites, specifically to get extra grip on the nib and pull it out more easily. So if you have like a rubber sheet or something you can use that for extra grip. Some nibs just stick in harder than others, so what some people may make look easy will probably not be that easy for most people.
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Sep 26, 2013 15:41
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wodan22 posted:This is kind of a stupid question, and I fear I already know the answer, but here goes: You can indeed use a fountain pen for carbon/whatever paper, in fact a lot of companies made pens with nibs specifically for this! You need an extremely stiff nib, often referred to as a "nail", called a Manifold nib by some companies, and you can press down pretty hard with them without damaging the nib. Sheaffer Triumph nibs are very stiff and are perfect for carbon paper, and I believe Esterbrook made manifold nibs though I can't recall the nib number off the top of my head. To be honest, if you got a really cheap pen that you didn't care about massively then you can get away with pressing down as many modern nibs as they are a lot less flexy than they used to be in the past.
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Sep 27, 2013 14:18
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wodan22 posted:My main work pens are TWSBI 580, TWSBI VAC700, and Pilot Metro, all with the factory nibs. None of them are "flex nibs", but do you think they are stiff enough that it would be ok? I'll be honest, I've not used any of those pens, though I do have a 1.5mm TWSBI 540 and I wouldn't think that's stiff enough to use without damaging the nib. If you don't press down hard enough to splay the tines of the nib out too far then you'll be fine, you just have to be very aware that if you push it too much you'll most likely wreck your nib. It depends entirely on how much force you have to apply to get a copy out. I don't want to say "yes you can definitely use those pens for carbon paper" because I don't want to be wrong and have you hurt your pens, though if you're careful they should be fine. Though I will say I have used fountain pens for carbon paper and had no ill effects to the nib, ymmv.
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Sep 27, 2013 15:07
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droneboat609 posted:Thats why I am sort of excited to be doomed I too really prefer handwriting assignments than typing them up on a computer, and fortunately my university will still happily take most assignments handwritten with an exception being a dissertation. Unfortunately my handwriting sucks so I can't handwrite my assignments for the fear of it not being legible
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Sep 30, 2013 18:05
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ive always preferred hand writing over typing, sadly most schools/universities will not accept a hand written paper anymore.
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DasNasty posted:I am a complete scrub at fountain pens, so allow me to ask: what is the difference between Italian fountain pens, American fountain pens, Japanese fountain pens, etc.? Also any writing I do is more or less limited to note-taking and the odd open ended problem on an exam, so which nub should I get? I still want my notes to look super pretty There's no real functional difference in pens from different countries, it's mostly differences in design philosophy more than anything else. Though Japanese nibs do generally run a size smaller than their Western equivalent due to the intricate characters in their alphabet which are impossible to write clearly with a wide nib. Personally I'm a big fan of Italian pens, though I can't exactly explain why. For general writing I'd say a Fine nib if your writing is relatively small, or a Medium if it's a bit bigger. I wouldn't go for a broad or italic just for note-taking. You can compare the relative widths of nibs here
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Oct 8, 2013 19:31
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Duro posted:I can explain why in my case: national pride I think what you just wrote there almost perfectly represents my views of Italian pens too. Though I'm not Italian, so not so much from national pride. I own pens from many countries; Germany (Pelikan), Japan (Pilot), China (Jinhao), France (Waterman), Taiwan (TWSBI), the UK (Onoto, Parker), and the US (Sheaffer). I won't pretend to know much about design, but the design of Italian pens just seems to speak to me on a more personal level than pens from any other country, despite maybe not being my favourite writing pen at that moment in time. I'm pretty loathe to use some cliched country stereotype, but each country's pens has its own design cues, from the Chinese ones having a lot going on and being pretty flashy, to the German ones being a bit more understated but very well built. I never used to know much about the Italian pen makers, but after going to a pen show and seeing the offerings from Visconti, Omas, and Aurora, and having a long talk with one of Auroras nibmeisters I've been hooked. That day I bought an Aurora Hastil after seeing it for the first time (probably one of the most understated pens you'll see, and also being famous for being the first writing instrument to make it into the New York MOMA) and now an Omas 360 is my new grail. Though if I could own an Omas Cohiba I would, just for the sheer hilarity of it.
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Oct 9, 2013 15:45
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Reivax posted:The new Hero knock off Lamy Safaris are here: Hero 359 Ugh I really can't stand it when these companies just blatantly rip off a product like that. Let's see, if we take Hero's past experience in fantastic quality control, I'm going to go with maybe 10% might write well?
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Oct 12, 2013 22:23
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