I think people over-complicate fountain pens a lot.
I have a Lamy Safari that I got in 2012 and works just as well today.
It's what I still recommend to anyone who asks what to get.
Just get the pen, with its cartridge, add more cartridges -- you can stay here and already you're way better than with most standard ball pens that you'd be using otherwise.
Then, get the small converter, plop it in, get your first bottle of ink -- and again you can stay here and enjoy your pen-and-ink experience for a long long time.
Now if you want to try a few different inks, do that next. Maybe get a second pen, see whether 'fine' or 'medium' sized nibs is more your thing.
Go further than that if you want, but you don't have to.
Either way, that first step is enough to improve your life a lot
As a person who's at the other end of the spectrum, I don't think it's complicating the matter unnecessarily causing us to fall into the rabbit hole.
Many people like to write also like to write with fountain pens a lot, hence we go exploring. Collecting pens, inks and paper.
I carry three pens. Three colors, three widths, three manufacturers (it's not a rule, but my current rotation is like that). What I currently have is a result of my own curiosity, and I would do the same if I have started over.
I sort of agree but I would say either get a cartridge pen or a refillable pen and leave it at that. Pick an ink and use it until it is gone. Don't get a second pen unless you actually have a need for a second pen.
There are few things in modern life which are lifetime buys and you can use every day of your life, a good pen is one of them, enjoy it instead of feeding into the endless search for something better. 99% of what I have written for the past ~decade has been with one pen, it is an old friend at this point. I picked my ink by it being a reputable brand and sold in bottles big enough that it would last years, and when it was time to order another bottle I had to pull it out to check what it was so I could order another because I had forgotten what it was. I am sure there are better pens and better inks but I have no real issues with what I have and anything else will be lacking in something more important than the supposed benefits offered by those better pens and inks.
The funny thing is, many entry level pens are much more reliable and dependable some of the higher end pens you pay thrice the price.
The secret sauce of Lamy and Faber Castell is, their lower and higher end pens use the same feeds and nibs, so the lower end pens are very dependable, too.
You can leave a simple Lamy Safari (one of my favorites) to your grandchildren, and they'll be happy with it, too.
The only thing is, a good gold nib is a very comfortable thing to use, if it's your cup of tea, but modern steel nibs are very enjoyable to use, too.
On the ink side, if you want to have a single ink to depend on, give Montblanc Royal Blue a go. My dad used to use only that ink, and when I used it for the first time, I told my dad how wonderful to write with that, and he answered "yeah, it is" with a grin.
Lamy 2000's grind geometry is different, and it's finished in hand though. 2000 is my one of the favorite pens, so I'm deeply familiar with it.
Also, Pilot's and Graf von Faber Castell's gold nibs are great and soft. On the other hand Sailor's 21K gold nibs are relatively nails and feels off it that's not your taste.
My point is, I'd rather carry a Kaweco or a Lamy with a replaceable steel nib as an EDC, because steel nibs' flow is a bit more conservative and they are cheaper if life happens. So they are more suited to EDC and daily use on the go.
However, a good gold nib is a very posh and enjoyable thing, but I prefer to use them at my desk due to their relative softness and high maintenance.
BTW, Lamy's steel nibs polish great in a month or two of daily usage. Pilot and Faber Castell are close followers, but Lamy becomes something sublime as you use it more.
In Lamy, except 2000, all nibs are replaceable with each other, incl. Emporium. Again in Lamy, except CP-1 and 2000, all feeds are replaceable with each other, incl. Emporium.
In Faber Castell, sans Grip 2011, all pens use the same nib and feed, incl Loom, Ambition, E-Motion, Neo Slim and others. Graf von Faber Castell uses same feeds with Faber Castell pens. Steel GvFC nibs on differ in stamping and maybe have tighter quality control, but interchangeable with standard FC pens. GvFC gold nibs are interchangeable again with pens using the same feeds, except some limited pens with bigger nibs.
Parker also uses the same nibs and very similar feeds inside the family. Waterman and Parker are under the same umbrella and only has cosmetic differences in their nibs and feeds, along almost all the pens.
Faber Castell Grip 2011 uses exactly the same feed and nib with Kaweco Perkeo. Kaweco's other pens, sans Original 250 all use the same nibs and feeds. Only feed housing is different between plastic and metal models, metal models having screw-on feed housings while plastic models have slip on versions.
Some other manufacturers like Franklin Christoph and Esterbrook use Schmidt #6 system with screw on nib units with custom stamping, so their nibs are interchangeable with any Schmidt #6 unit. One of my such pens have a custom grind called dentist (a reverse architect, basically) ground from a bog standard Schmidt #6.
Lamy 2000, Scheaffer Inlaid/Imperial, Parker Duofold, Montblanc are outliers in the pen world with their bespoke nibs and feeds. Nibs and feeds are very optimized over the years, and big manufacturers prefer to build their different pens on the same proven platforms, because these parts are hard, slow and expensive to optimize further when you hit the sweet spot. Also, precision machinery is expensive. So when you optimize, you exploit that platform.
I mean, if using an "irrational" tool to write allows me to write longer, better and helps me think clearer, I'll only call this hobby "irrationally rational" :)
Excellent starting point but they are sooo scratchy. It made me doubt if fountain pens were for me, but I bought some cheap pens that were less fine and it was a dream.
I carry a few pens with me - different color ink for different days of the week - so I can see how much I wrote in a single day. Started doing it after I read about Neil Gaiman's writing habits.
Piston pens have the filling system fully contained. The only place ink can come out is the nib. Converters, in my limited experience, don't always have a perfect fit or come loose during the filling process.
More deft hands probably don't have this problem. I would come out with inky hands no matter the filling system when I first started using fountain pens. Look ma', no (stained) hands!
They’re sort of similar, but also opposite. A convertor twists up the pen pulling ink into the chamber. A piston twists down the pen creating a vacuum first. When it gets to the bottom the vacuum is exposed to the nib and the ink is rapidly sucked up. I definitely find the piston less messy.
> Either way, that first step is enough to improve your life a lot
Clearly you've never tried being left-handed.
(I joke, but I also wish fountain pens wouldn't fundamentally be incompatible with my way of writing. And I was taught to write with a fountain pen using cursive in school, so it's not like I didn't try.)
I think this kinda misses the point of what lost modern pen enthusiasts are looking for.
For one thing, limiting yourself to pre-filled cartridges locks you out of 95%+ of the fancy ink out there, which is sold bottled for use with internal reservoirs.
Some fancier inks also comes in cartridges though. Most of Diamine's collection, Kaweco, Montblanc, Graf von Faber Castell and Waterman comes in international standard cartridges too.
Yeah, Waterman is not that "fancy", but being able to carry 8 long cartridges of Serenity/Florida blue with a dependable pen is hard to beat if you are on the go.
Fancy has a lot of meanings. For me, fancy means higher quality, for you means glitter/shimmer inks, which I personally don't prefer to use. However, having different opinions are OK, though, this is how it should be.
For me, a good permanent or IG ink is fancy enough, because I can use them in my lab notebooks and be sure to open and re-read it five years later. For you, a fancy ink brings you joy and has different tricks IIUC, and is equally valid.
I have a shelf full of bottles of ink I wouldn't have bought if the site had existed (and/or I had known about it sooner, since that spans years). They've prevented many similar wasted purchases, and guided several delighted purchases.
Handwriting seems to be becoming more and more of a niche phenomenon, actually paying attention to what one writes with even more so, and actually using fountain pens yet more so. Still, there seems to be an absurd number of ink makers around, producing an absurd number of inks. I suppose dyes and water are relatively cheap, and can be mixed in buckets...
A good number of the inks are because of artists, hence the wide variety of colors including colors which are not particularly useful for writing. The water based inks used in fountain pens are the primary inks for pen and ink drawing because they allow all of the classic techniques like washes and water brushes which do not work with other sorts of inks. Many of the makers of these inks have started to exploit the fountain pen fad to expand their market.
> A good number of the inks are because of artists
I actually think you have it backwards. Hobbyists drive the economics of almost all gear used for creative pursuits. For every artist making meaningful objects and sharing them with the world, there are a 100 dabblers who fantasize about being that, buy a bunch of stuff, but never really use it.
This is a strange but ultimately harmonious economic arrangement. Hobbyists increase scale, which helps gear producers lower costs, which benefit actual artists.
I did not say "professional artists," I said "artists" which includes the dabblers with the dreams of becoming professional artists but does not include pen collectors with a cabinet full of ink whose lifetime of ink purchases might reach the yearly ink purchase of anyone remotely serious about their art.
As a person who writes a lot, "seems" is the important word here.
In IT circles, computers and tablets are the most coveted tools for note taking due to processing flexibility it provides, but while less visible, writing is there, evolving.
From personal experience, writing with pen and paper unlocks a different mode in brain. Personally, I can concentrate better, think deeper and clearer, hence I work with pen and paper a lot, incl. software/architecture/algorithm design, free-form thinking while working on other things. I keep "lab notebooks" for software I develop. I also keep a hand-written diary, which again feels and affects very differently when compared to writing to a text document on screen.
There's another sub-culture who writes for the sake of writing (people generally transcribe books by hand). I don't judge them, but that's not my taste.
Some writing inks are very cheap (Pelikan 4001 / Lamy Standard / Parker / Waterman comes to my mind), but some pigments and dyes are very expensive and inks are produced in limited quantities. Companies like Noodler's produce very interesting chemistries and try to keep their costs low to provide the most ink for the buck, but they also make some exotic inks. It's not uncommon to ask a producer why an ink is not produced anymore, and getting "they don't make the dyes anymore, we got their all stock they produced for the last couple of years" as an answer.
So, tl;dr: Writing has evolved, but it's not going anywhere soon. Some of us are writing a ton, with purpose and intent. And no, some inks are not cheap, but "standard issue" inks are optimized for cost and performance, and they are very good inks, indeed.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
I think hand-writing is gone already, save a few hipsters who like it more for the calm and repetitiveness than because they actually need to write what they are writing.
I can write 20x faster with a keyboard and I won't have cramps after a few minutes. And I don't think painful hands are a prerequisite for deep thought.
I'll kindly disagree here, because I both type and write a lot. Yes, typing is faster than writing, but that's not the point of writing.
Writing's speed and correction limits makes me think and filter before I actually write. This allows me to form clearer thoughts in less time. I arrive to a better place, faster.
Also, neither writing nor typing cramps my hands, and I do both of them for hours if I need to. That's interesting.
I'm slowly collecting research focusing on differences on typing and writing, but the landscape is barren. I'll publish a list when I have sufficient resources at hand.
When it comes to fountain pens and inks, I went down a rabbit hole more than once in the past.
Noodlers makes some unique pens and inks. I have a Noodlers Ahab, for example, that has a very flexible nib. Different than any of the more conventional pens I used before.
But one thing that bothers me about fountain pens is that they are messy. Some of it can be avoided. You don't need a piston filler to dip into your special ink bottle to refill your pen if you don't mind using regular cartridges. But one thing that seems unavoidable is that the "section" (the part where you hold the pen) gets messy when you put the cap on it. I wonder why every fountain pen seems to have this design. One would think that a smaller cap that only covers the nib would suffice.
I wonder if there are fountain pens like this. I feel another rabbit hole calling.
> But one thing that seems unavoidable is that the "section" (the part where you hold the pen) gets messy when you put the cap on it. I wonder why every fountain pen seems to have this design.
FYI, there are fountain pens with a retractable nib that don't have a cap, including for example the:
- Pilot Vanishing Point/Capless/Decimo (there's a cheaper Japanese "Special Alloy" version as well)
- LAMY dialog
- Platinum Curidas
I don't know if they fix your inky fingers issue but if taking the cap on and off is a hassle then these might be worth looking into.
Sometimes fountain pens "spit". This happens more frequently if the ink is low, the pressure changes or the pen get rocked a bit more than their liking.
Carrying pens nib up, in a pocket or bag helps. Also some pens are more resistant to this. From my experience Lamy, Faber Castell and Kaweco makes most spit-resistant and accessible pens. I can recommend Lamy Safari, Kaweco Perkeo or Faber Castell Grip 2011 (basically a Perkeo in a different shell), if you want to explore further.
I think another reason for messy fingers is the way I hold the pen. It's easy to come into contact with the nib or the exposed part of the feed when you're not careful.
Lamy Safari, Kaweco Perkeo and Faber Castell Grip 2011 have triangular grips which forces you to hold the pen correctly. Many people find these uncomfortable, but I love them. Because it allows me blindly open them (i.e.: Oh I need to take note of this, where's my pen?) while looking to the screen or elsewhere.
We all start from somewhere. Using fountain pens is not an instinctual thing. Also, even after trying these and decide that fountain pens aren't for you, that's perfectly OK, too.
From my experience, when you get used to fountain pens, they're not messier than a ballpoint pen.
While the colours and such do look very nice, the "writing samples" images show exactly why I hate using fountain pens. I'm left-handed, so if I try to write prose then my hand will just smudge the writing. I've always found that cheap ballpoints are the least likely to smudge, even if they still leave residue on my hand, and as the pen gets more "premium", the worse the smudging problem gets.
I like to use as fine a pen as possible if I'm just trying to work something out (diagrams, small notes, etc), and I've found that a Unipin Fine Line (currently a 0.03) does work well, though I've been having some issues with ink flow recently (though the pen is probably nearing the end of its life at this point anyway). I have liked the feel of Uniball Eye pens in the past, though they have a similar smudging problem if used for prose. Other than that, the cheapest Bic ballpoints have been the most successful for me, since the ink dries super fast and they feel good enough to write with.
In school I was given a specific left handed fountain pen to write with, but I always had to write at wonky angles to try and keep it legible, and it never really worked very well anyway. Pushing the pen instead of pulling it generally gives bad results. I have experimented with trying to do mirror writing, like Leonardo da Vinci, but obviously nobody else can read it like that
As a fountain pen enthusiast with some beautiful pens that will probably become rare in the future, it makes me somewhat sad that my only son is left-handed.
Don't feel sad. I'm left handed, too and use fountain pens specifically. I hold my pens as a right handed person would, so my hand is very far from what I write, and I never smudge anything.
Hopefully you can impress on him that they are important to you, and rare, and while he may not use them, he can still respect them for what they are, and look after them
This is why I can't get into fountain pens (also left handed). I want to hold a pen like a right handed person does. I want to use the inks, pens, and papers that everyone else uses without taking special consideration for my being left handed. Why should I have to learn to write underhand or to hook my wrist or to tilt the paper when I write, just to avoid smudging? I don't see right handed people doing it.
My pinky rests just above the line I'm currently writing on — the line I just finished. You'd expect that to cause the most smudging, since the ink is still fresh, but surprisingly, it doesn’t.
I've been buying from Goulet for years, but lately their service has taken a major nosedive. I recommend people stay away from them now.
The last pen I received from them was broken. They would not take it back, asked me to deal with the manufacturer directly. Horrible customer service. After so many expensive pens (Pelikan, Pilot and Visconti), I won't be buying from them again.
It was a Visconti Opera Master. Comes with a power reservoir filler that detached from the nib assembly within five days of purchase. Turned out the threads were completely mismatched, that pen should have never been sold. Now, granted Visconti has serious QC issues, but this was a limited edition and not only did Goulet fail to catch the issue during testing but they also refused to do anything about it except refer me to the manufacturer.
I ended up fixing the pen myself. It works well now, but after that experience, I am done with Goulet.
Eh, it's a thousand-dollar Italian statement pen. If the guy doesn't really want to run a Lambo dealership, I get it, and I can see where you might be annoyed to have helped find that out. For those of us with less rarefied tastes, I think things are probably pretty different on a lot of axes, but all it takes to spend money is money.
As I said nearby [1], when I had Decimo trouble, he not only got hold of Pilot to find out they don't sell an OEM o-ring, but after that spent the day back and forth with me via email, making and giving accurate measurements of an intact part, all kinds of things. The end result is still the first pen I reach for all day, every day. I don't know what was really so different between your case and mine, but I doubt it had that much to do with Brian.
Strong recommend. Brian's a friendly and diligent guy, always ready to help research and solve customer problems. The only fountain pens I don't get from Goulet Pens are the ones they don't sell.
We're not quite that close, sad to say; for the most part I'm just a very happy customer, and past that we once collaborated via email to find and source a suitable replacement part for my Decimo, when it extruded its body joint o-ring a few years back. But I'm sure he'd be glad to hear from you!
If anyone wants get into the rabbit hole of fountain pens and related items a little deeper, they should check Galen Leather: https://www.galenleather.com
I am a fountain pen convert myself, and use them almost exclusively these days for my algorithmic plotter art. This website is a fantastic resource that I’ve referred to countless times.
You will like “Carbon Black CHOU Kuro.” It is, I think, currently the father of all Black Inks. If you wish to read up, here is an article I found searching — it compares Chou Kuro’s Platinum against the Carbon Black.
I had some fountain pens over the years, but I was never able to truly enjoy them or recommend them to anyone. I didn't find them practical as daily writing tools and or too fun as a hobby.
I really dislike the feeling that you need to be a bit careful with a tool. I want the peace of mind of being able to drop pens nib-first into the ground. They're also not great for writing on many types of paper and require some care and maintenance.
My experience getting into double-edge razors/nice shaving soaps was much better. They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way.
(On the pen front, today I'm very satisfied with my "Kaweco LILIPUT Ball Pen Stainless Steel" - it's super compact, has a nice weight to it and just feels well-constructed and solid. I hope to use it for many years to come. (If you want to get one, beware the Aluminium version, which looks identical but is noticeably lighter))
Eh. I think I see where you're going but that spacing is really hard to get right and it would clog like nobody's business, you're better off just going with regular ink in the 6mm Parallel.
> They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way.
Most of us who use fountain pen feel this way too.
I literally just an hour ago tried picking up a gel pen for writing and 3 minutes later it went back into storage. It's Uniball One so it's not a bad gel pen either.
For anyone wanting to know and learn more, there's also the r/fountainpens subreddit with 350k subs (because of course there exists a subreddit for every such niche).
It's a good place to get a sense of the hobby's breadth, as people post hauls of freshly bought pens and ink they'll never use. As with all else on Reddit, you're wise not to stay long.
I think people over-complicate fountain pens a lot.
I have a Lamy Safari that I got in 2012 and works just as well today.
It's what I still recommend to anyone who asks what to get.
Just get the pen, with its cartridge, add more cartridges -- you can stay here and already you're way better than with most standard ball pens that you'd be using otherwise.
Then, get the small converter, plop it in, get your first bottle of ink -- and again you can stay here and enjoy your pen-and-ink experience for a long long time.
Now if you want to try a few different inks, do that next. Maybe get a second pen, see whether 'fine' or 'medium' sized nibs is more your thing.
Go further than that if you want, but you don't have to.
Either way, that first step is enough to improve your life a lot
As a person who's at the other end of the spectrum, I don't think it's complicating the matter unnecessarily causing us to fall into the rabbit hole.
Many people like to write also like to write with fountain pens a lot, hence we go exploring. Collecting pens, inks and paper.
I carry three pens. Three colors, three widths, three manufacturers (it's not a rule, but my current rotation is like that). What I currently have is a result of my own curiosity, and I would do the same if I have started over.
I sort of agree but I would say either get a cartridge pen or a refillable pen and leave it at that. Pick an ink and use it until it is gone. Don't get a second pen unless you actually have a need for a second pen.
There are few things in modern life which are lifetime buys and you can use every day of your life, a good pen is one of them, enjoy it instead of feeding into the endless search for something better. 99% of what I have written for the past ~decade has been with one pen, it is an old friend at this point. I picked my ink by it being a reputable brand and sold in bottles big enough that it would last years, and when it was time to order another bottle I had to pull it out to check what it was so I could order another because I had forgotten what it was. I am sure there are better pens and better inks but I have no real issues with what I have and anything else will be lacking in something more important than the supposed benefits offered by those better pens and inks.
The funny thing is, many entry level pens are much more reliable and dependable some of the higher end pens you pay thrice the price.
The secret sauce of Lamy and Faber Castell is, their lower and higher end pens use the same feeds and nibs, so the lower end pens are very dependable, too.
You can leave a simple Lamy Safari (one of my favorites) to your grandchildren, and they'll be happy with it, too.
The only thing is, a good gold nib is a very comfortable thing to use, if it's your cup of tea, but modern steel nibs are very enjoyable to use, too.
On the ink side, if you want to have a single ink to depend on, give Montblanc Royal Blue a go. My dad used to use only that ink, and when I used it for the first time, I told my dad how wonderful to write with that, and he answered "yeah, it is" with a grin.
That isn’t true at all. The nib in my Lamy 2000 is nothing at all like the nib on one of the mass market pens.
Lamy 2000's grind geometry is different, and it's finished in hand though. 2000 is my one of the favorite pens, so I'm deeply familiar with it.
Also, Pilot's and Graf von Faber Castell's gold nibs are great and soft. On the other hand Sailor's 21K gold nibs are relatively nails and feels off it that's not your taste.
My point is, I'd rather carry a Kaweco or a Lamy with a replaceable steel nib as an EDC, because steel nibs' flow is a bit more conservative and they are cheaper if life happens. So they are more suited to EDC and daily use on the go.
However, a good gold nib is a very posh and enjoyable thing, but I prefer to use them at my desk due to their relative softness and high maintenance.
BTW, Lamy's steel nibs polish great in a month or two of daily usage. Pilot and Faber Castell are close followers, but Lamy becomes something sublime as you use it more.
Your GP said, and I quote, "The secret sauce of Lamy and Faber Castell is, their lower and higher end pens use the same feeds and nibs".
That is plainly incorrect.
In Lamy, except 2000, all nibs are replaceable with each other, incl. Emporium. Again in Lamy, except CP-1 and 2000, all feeds are replaceable with each other, incl. Emporium.
In Faber Castell, sans Grip 2011, all pens use the same nib and feed, incl Loom, Ambition, E-Motion, Neo Slim and others. Graf von Faber Castell uses same feeds with Faber Castell pens. Steel GvFC nibs on differ in stamping and maybe have tighter quality control, but interchangeable with standard FC pens. GvFC gold nibs are interchangeable again with pens using the same feeds, except some limited pens with bigger nibs.
Parker also uses the same nibs and very similar feeds inside the family. Waterman and Parker are under the same umbrella and only has cosmetic differences in their nibs and feeds, along almost all the pens.
Faber Castell Grip 2011 uses exactly the same feed and nib with Kaweco Perkeo. Kaweco's other pens, sans Original 250 all use the same nibs and feeds. Only feed housing is different between plastic and metal models, metal models having screw-on feed housings while plastic models have slip on versions.
Some other manufacturers like Franklin Christoph and Esterbrook use Schmidt #6 system with screw on nib units with custom stamping, so their nibs are interchangeable with any Schmidt #6 unit. One of my such pens have a custom grind called dentist (a reverse architect, basically) ground from a bog standard Schmidt #6.
Lamy 2000, Scheaffer Inlaid/Imperial, Parker Duofold, Montblanc are outliers in the pen world with their bespoke nibs and feeds. Nibs and feeds are very optimized over the years, and big manufacturers prefer to build their different pens on the same proven platforms, because these parts are hard, slow and expensive to optimize further when you hit the sweet spot. Also, precision machinery is expensive. So when you optimize, you exploit that platform.
You are putting rationale and practical thinking up against a classic irrational hobby.
The best hobbies are usually both irrational and completely unnecessary.
I mean, if using an "irrational" tool to write allows me to write longer, better and helps me think clearer, I'll only call this hobby "irrationally rational" :)
That's a good story but people know good hobbies are not about the tools but the skill.
I also write way more legible with fountain pens and can also maintain/repair my pens, too.
I also take photos and dance. Does this fulfill your criteria for good hobbies? :)
>Now if you want to try a few different inks, do that next. Maybe get a second pen, see whether 'fine' or 'medium' sized nibs is more your thing.
And that’s the moment you fell into the trap.
the Zebra disposable fountain pens are EXCELLENT for how cheap they are, it's honestly a shame they're not refillable
Excellent starting point but they are sooo scratchy. It made me doubt if fountain pens were for me, but I bought some cheap pens that were less fine and it was a dream.
I carry a few pens with me - different color ink for different days of the week - so I can see how much I wrote in a single day. Started doing it after I read about Neil Gaiman's writing habits.
I always kinda hated the cartridges and the ink that came in them from day 1.
My second pen was filled by piston and I bought some cheap Diamine samplers, and it was both simple to use and cheap.
I found converters to be often hard to use which results in messes.
You don’t fill a “converted” different from a piston one. Both operate exactly the same. Why the mess?
Piston pens have the filling system fully contained. The only place ink can come out is the nib. Converters, in my limited experience, don't always have a perfect fit or come loose during the filling process.
More deft hands probably don't have this problem. I would come out with inky hands no matter the filling system when I first started using fountain pens. Look ma', no (stained) hands!
They’re sort of similar, but also opposite. A convertor twists up the pen pulling ink into the chamber. A piston twists down the pen creating a vacuum first. When it gets to the bottom the vacuum is exposed to the nib and the ink is rapidly sucked up. I definitely find the piston less messy.
Vacuum based filling systems are called “vacuum fillers”, like Pilot Custom 823.
A piston pen is exactly same as a converter one. For example Pelikan M605, Twsbi Eco, Lamy 2000, etc.
Vacuum pens are nice, but need more care during filling and need deeper bottles since the process is somewhat more violent.
> Then, get the small converter […]
E.g.:
* https://www.lamy.com/en-us/p/lamy-z-28-converter
> Either way, that first step is enough to improve your life a lot
Clearly you've never tried being left-handed.
(I joke, but I also wish fountain pens wouldn't fundamentally be incompatible with my way of writing. And I was taught to write with a fountain pen using cursive in school, so it's not like I didn't try.)
I think this kinda misses the point of what lost modern pen enthusiasts are looking for.
For one thing, limiting yourself to pre-filled cartridges locks you out of 95%+ of the fancy ink out there, which is sold bottled for use with internal reservoirs.
Some fancier inks also comes in cartridges though. Most of Diamine's collection, Kaweco, Montblanc, Graf von Faber Castell and Waterman comes in international standard cartridges too.
Yeah, Waterman is not that "fancy", but being able to carry 8 long cartridges of Serenity/Florida blue with a dependable pen is hard to beat if you are on the go.
None of those I would really class as "fancy". Good ink, yes. Fancy, no.
They're not (except maybe Diamine occasionally) making shimmer inks, or glitter inks, or color shift inks, or ...
I'm talking mostly about small boutique makers.
Fancy has a lot of meanings. For me, fancy means higher quality, for you means glitter/shimmer inks, which I personally don't prefer to use. However, having different opinions are OK, though, this is how it should be.
For me, a good permanent or IG ink is fancy enough, because I can use them in my lab notebooks and be sure to open and re-read it five years later. For you, a fancy ink brings you joy and has different tricks IIUC, and is equally valid.
I have a shelf full of bottles of ink I wouldn't have bought if the site had existed (and/or I had known about it sooner, since that spans years). They've prevented many similar wasted purchases, and guided several delighted purchases.
Very useful!
Handwriting seems to be becoming more and more of a niche phenomenon, actually paying attention to what one writes with even more so, and actually using fountain pens yet more so. Still, there seems to be an absurd number of ink makers around, producing an absurd number of inks. I suppose dyes and water are relatively cheap, and can be mixed in buckets...
A good number of the inks are because of artists, hence the wide variety of colors including colors which are not particularly useful for writing. The water based inks used in fountain pens are the primary inks for pen and ink drawing because they allow all of the classic techniques like washes and water brushes which do not work with other sorts of inks. Many of the makers of these inks have started to exploit the fountain pen fad to expand their market.
> A good number of the inks are because of artists
I actually think you have it backwards. Hobbyists drive the economics of almost all gear used for creative pursuits. For every artist making meaningful objects and sharing them with the world, there are a 100 dabblers who fantasize about being that, buy a bunch of stuff, but never really use it.
This is a strange but ultimately harmonious economic arrangement. Hobbyists increase scale, which helps gear producers lower costs, which benefit actual artists.
I did not say "professional artists," I said "artists" which includes the dabblers with the dreams of becoming professional artists but does not include pen collectors with a cabinet full of ink whose lifetime of ink purchases might reach the yearly ink purchase of anyone remotely serious about their art.
As a person who writes a lot, "seems" is the important word here.
In IT circles, computers and tablets are the most coveted tools for note taking due to processing flexibility it provides, but while less visible, writing is there, evolving.
From personal experience, writing with pen and paper unlocks a different mode in brain. Personally, I can concentrate better, think deeper and clearer, hence I work with pen and paper a lot, incl. software/architecture/algorithm design, free-form thinking while working on other things. I keep "lab notebooks" for software I develop. I also keep a hand-written diary, which again feels and affects very differently when compared to writing to a text document on screen.
There's another sub-culture who writes for the sake of writing (people generally transcribe books by hand). I don't judge them, but that's not my taste.
Some writing inks are very cheap (Pelikan 4001 / Lamy Standard / Parker / Waterman comes to my mind), but some pigments and dyes are very expensive and inks are produced in limited quantities. Companies like Noodler's produce very interesting chemistries and try to keep their costs low to provide the most ink for the buck, but they also make some exotic inks. It's not uncommon to ask a producer why an ink is not produced anymore, and getting "they don't make the dyes anymore, we got their all stock they produced for the last couple of years" as an answer.
So, tl;dr: Writing has evolved, but it's not going anywhere soon. Some of us are writing a ton, with purpose and intent. And no, some inks are not cheap, but "standard issue" inks are optimized for cost and performance, and they are very good inks, indeed.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
I think hand-writing is gone already, save a few hipsters who like it more for the calm and repetitiveness than because they actually need to write what they are writing.
I can write 20x faster with a keyboard and I won't have cramps after a few minutes. And I don't think painful hands are a prerequisite for deep thought.
I'll kindly disagree here, because I both type and write a lot. Yes, typing is faster than writing, but that's not the point of writing.
Writing's speed and correction limits makes me think and filter before I actually write. This allows me to form clearer thoughts in less time. I arrive to a better place, faster.
Also, neither writing nor typing cramps my hands, and I do both of them for hours if I need to. That's interesting.
I'm slowly collecting research focusing on differences on typing and writing, but the landscape is barren. I'll publish a list when I have sufficient resources at hand.
How would you know?
I was born with hands, I know how having hands feels.
As well say you were born with the ability to acquire language, so you know how it feels to speak every language in the world. Have fun with that.
When it comes to fountain pens and inks, I went down a rabbit hole more than once in the past.
Noodlers makes some unique pens and inks. I have a Noodlers Ahab, for example, that has a very flexible nib. Different than any of the more conventional pens I used before.
But one thing that bothers me about fountain pens is that they are messy. Some of it can be avoided. You don't need a piston filler to dip into your special ink bottle to refill your pen if you don't mind using regular cartridges. But one thing that seems unavoidable is that the "section" (the part where you hold the pen) gets messy when you put the cap on it. I wonder why every fountain pen seems to have this design. One would think that a smaller cap that only covers the nib would suffice.
I wonder if there are fountain pens like this. I feel another rabbit hole calling.
> But one thing that seems unavoidable is that the "section" (the part where you hold the pen) gets messy when you put the cap on it. I wonder why every fountain pen seems to have this design.
FYI, there are fountain pens with a retractable nib that don't have a cap, including for example the:
- Pilot Vanishing Point/Capless/Decimo (there's a cheaper Japanese "Special Alloy" version as well)
- LAMY dialog
- Platinum Curidas
I don't know if they fix your inky fingers issue but if taking the cap on and off is a hassle then these might be worth looking into.
EDIT: formatting
The Ahab nib just gouges tracks into paper, and the pen reeks. Save your money.
I've never ever had a section get messy. Ever.
How do you carry your pens? Do you fly with them a lot?
Not at all. But it seems that the inside of the caps gets messy anyway. Probably from the nib making contact when capping.
Sometimes fountain pens "spit". This happens more frequently if the ink is low, the pressure changes or the pen get rocked a bit more than their liking.
Carrying pens nib up, in a pocket or bag helps. Also some pens are more resistant to this. From my experience Lamy, Faber Castell and Kaweco makes most spit-resistant and accessible pens. I can recommend Lamy Safari, Kaweco Perkeo or Faber Castell Grip 2011 (basically a Perkeo in a different shell), if you want to explore further.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.
Thanks for the advice!
I think another reason for messy fingers is the way I hold the pen. It's easy to come into contact with the nib or the exposed part of the feed when you're not careful.
I might just be a bit clumsy. :)
You're most welcome. :)
> I might just be a bit clumsy. :)
We all are, don't feel bad about it.
Lamy Safari, Kaweco Perkeo and Faber Castell Grip 2011 have triangular grips which forces you to hold the pen correctly. Many people find these uncomfortable, but I love them. Because it allows me blindly open them (i.e.: Oh I need to take note of this, where's my pen?) while looking to the screen or elsewhere.
We all start from somewhere. Using fountain pens is not an instinctual thing. Also, even after trying these and decide that fountain pens aren't for you, that's perfectly OK, too.
From my experience, when you get used to fountain pens, they're not messier than a ballpoint pen.
Hope these tips help,
Have a nice day! ;)
While the colours and such do look very nice, the "writing samples" images show exactly why I hate using fountain pens. I'm left-handed, so if I try to write prose then my hand will just smudge the writing. I've always found that cheap ballpoints are the least likely to smudge, even if they still leave residue on my hand, and as the pen gets more "premium", the worse the smudging problem gets.
I like to use as fine a pen as possible if I'm just trying to work something out (diagrams, small notes, etc), and I've found that a Unipin Fine Line (currently a 0.03) does work well, though I've been having some issues with ink flow recently (though the pen is probably nearing the end of its life at this point anyway). I have liked the feel of Uniball Eye pens in the past, though they have a similar smudging problem if used for prose. Other than that, the cheapest Bic ballpoints have been the most successful for me, since the ink dries super fast and they feel good enough to write with.
In school I was given a specific left handed fountain pen to write with, but I always had to write at wonky angles to try and keep it legible, and it never really worked very well anyway. Pushing the pen instead of pulling it generally gives bad results. I have experimented with trying to do mirror writing, like Leonardo da Vinci, but obviously nobody else can read it like that
As a fountain pen enthusiast with some beautiful pens that will probably become rare in the future, it makes me somewhat sad that my only son is left-handed.
Don't feel sad. I'm left handed, too and use fountain pens specifically. I hold my pens as a right handed person would, so my hand is very far from what I write, and I never smudge anything.
Hopefully you can impress on him that they are important to you, and rare, and while he may not use them, he can still respect them for what they are, and look after them
Hoping not to be culturally-deaf, you have an arabic sounding username, so maybe there is still hope for him if he decides to learn the language
FYI Al-Khwarizmi was a famous Persian mathematician from the Islamic Golden Age. The word "algorithm" is derived from his name.
I'm left handed and I never smudge at all.
I use Iroshizuku Kon Peki, Oxford Optik paper, Pilot Prera and Kakuno in M width.
What hand position do you use? The equivalent of a right handed person, or a specialised one to move your hand away from the writing?
This is why I can't get into fountain pens (also left handed). I want to hold a pen like a right handed person does. I want to use the inks, pens, and papers that everyone else uses without taking special consideration for my being left handed. Why should I have to learn to write underhand or to hook my wrist or to tilt the paper when I write, just to avoid smudging? I don't see right handed people doing it.
It'd be easier to learn to write right handed. It takes about 3 months, speaking from personal experience, to change your dominant hand.
My pinky rests just above the line I'm currently writing on — the line I just finished. You'd expect that to cause the most smudging, since the ink is still fresh, but surprisingly, it doesn’t.
I'm left handed, I use european fine pens with oxford optik paper and I never smudge. Probably it depends on the ink. I use mostly Iroshizuku inks.
In the states, Goulet Pens is a wonderful niche retailer of inks and fountain pens. https://www.gouletpens.com/
I've been buying from Goulet for years, but lately their service has taken a major nosedive. I recommend people stay away from them now.
The last pen I received from them was broken. They would not take it back, asked me to deal with the manufacturer directly. Horrible customer service. After so many expensive pens (Pelikan, Pilot and Visconti), I won't be buying from them again.
Which pen?
It was a Visconti Opera Master. Comes with a power reservoir filler that detached from the nib assembly within five days of purchase. Turned out the threads were completely mismatched, that pen should have never been sold. Now, granted Visconti has serious QC issues, but this was a limited edition and not only did Goulet fail to catch the issue during testing but they also refused to do anything about it except refer me to the manufacturer.
I ended up fixing the pen myself. It works well now, but after that experience, I am done with Goulet.
Eh, it's a thousand-dollar Italian statement pen. If the guy doesn't really want to run a Lambo dealership, I get it, and I can see where you might be annoyed to have helped find that out. For those of us with less rarefied tastes, I think things are probably pretty different on a lot of axes, but all it takes to spend money is money.
As I said nearby [1], when I had Decimo trouble, he not only got hold of Pilot to find out they don't sell an OEM o-ring, but after that spent the day back and forth with me via email, making and giving accurate measurements of an intact part, all kinds of things. The end result is still the first pen I reach for all day, every day. I don't know what was really so different between your case and mine, but I doubt it had that much to do with Brian.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757775
Strong recommend. Brian's a friendly and diligent guy, always ready to help research and solve customer problems. The only fountain pens I don't get from Goulet Pens are the ones they don't sell.
Once I bought something from them and they shipped it here, overseas. The packaging arrived perfectly. I really wish them all the best.
If you talk with him, and if you can relay this, I'd be glad.
We're not quite that close, sad to say; for the most part I'm just a very happy customer, and past that we once collaborated via email to find and source a suitable replacement part for my Decimo, when it extruded its body joint o-ring a few years back. But I'm sure he'd be glad to hear from you!
For Fountain Pens, I stumbled on a YouTube Channel, Hemingway Jones that has some great videos about them. https://www.youtube.com/@HemingwayJones
Of course, all things Stationery, I occasionally continue to watch JetPens. Unfortunately, for my liking, they seem to be more and more Kawaii.
https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens
You can also look at Figboot on Pens: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1aF4MNqSzKIS2t0KHS1gw
He's a nice guy.
If anyone wants get into the rabbit hole of fountain pens and related items a little deeper, they should check Galen Leather: https://www.galenleather.com
I am a fountain pen convert myself, and use them almost exclusively these days for my algorithmic plotter art. This website is a fantastic resource that I’ve referred to countless times.
I’ve even written my take on why they’re such great devices for machine art: https://lostpixels.io/writings/fountain-pens-plotters
I see you were bit by the Iroshizuku bug
Amazing — this is what I'm here for!
I came across the website a few months ago and bought my first fountain pen and two of the top recommend inks from the site.
Black: Sailor Jentle Black
Blue Black: Sailor Sei-boku
You will like “Carbon Black CHOU Kuro.” It is, I think, currently the father of all Black Inks. If you wish to read up, here is an article I found searching — it compares Chou Kuro’s Platinum against the Carbon Black.
https://www.penchalet.com/blog/platinum-chou-kuro-vs-carbon-...
Don't know how much weight to attribute to a sole review, but it was a 1 star:
https://www.amazon.ca/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0...
Well, 40 other reviews seem to like it more to be giving it 4+ stars. https://www.amazon.com/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B...
I had some fountain pens over the years, but I was never able to truly enjoy them or recommend them to anyone. I didn't find them practical as daily writing tools and or too fun as a hobby.
I really dislike the feeling that you need to be a bit careful with a tool. I want the peace of mind of being able to drop pens nib-first into the ground. They're also not great for writing on many types of paper and require some care and maintenance.
My experience getting into double-edge razors/nice shaving soaps was much better. They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way.
(On the pen front, today I'm very satisfied with my "Kaweco LILIPUT Ball Pen Stainless Steel" - it's super compact, has a nice weight to it and just feels well-constructed and solid. I hope to use it for many years to come. (If you want to get one, beware the Aluminium version, which looks identical but is noticeably lighter))
> My experience getting into double-edge razors
It’s called safety razor, if I understood you correctly.
Also, it’s quite hard to write with it, I’ll stick to fountain pens.
If you like to write your ransom notes in blood it’s just the thing.
Eh. I think I see where you're going but that spacing is really hard to get right and it would clog like nobody's business, you're better off just going with regular ink in the 6mm Parallel.
> They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way.
Most of us who use fountain pen feel this way too.
I literally just an hour ago tried picking up a gel pen for writing and 3 minutes later it went back into storage. It's Uniball One so it's not a bad gel pen either.
One could frame each image and display them all in an art gallery.
The ads are so obtrusive and overtly excessive in page coverage. Also one of your ad providers are redirecting to “Microsoft support”
Blissfully ad free with Firefox and uBlock Origin. If ads annoy you, I would suggest fixing your browser.
Even the neutered uBlock Origin Lite on Chrome is enough to make the ads go away.
For anyone wanting to know and learn more, there's also the r/fountainpens subreddit with 350k subs (because of course there exists a subreddit for every such niche).
It's a good place to get a sense of the hobby's breadth, as people post hauls of freshly bought pens and ink they'll never use. As with all else on Reddit, you're wise not to stay long.
Also there is Fountain Pen Network. (https://www.fountainpennetwork.com)
Mountain of ads.
True. When I mentioned this on an FP Discord, people actively shared tips about content blockers.