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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Pens, paper and ink
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loggats
Shipmate
# 17643
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Posted
Hello. I'm a member of the Fountain Pen Network (a forum for devotees of all things paper, pen and ink related) and it's going through an extended down time at the moment. So while I'm suffering from withdrawal, I wondered whether any of you were fountain pen fans -
Do you use fountain pens regularly? Do you do much hand writing at all?
I only write things out when I'm taking notes at uni (much prefer a steady skritchskratch to constant laptop clatter), or jotting down short notes/ideas.
Do any of you guys enjoy using fountain pens? Any favourite pens, paper, or ink?
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"He brought me into the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love."
Posts: 245 | Registered: Apr 2013
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
Heheheee, FPN...it's been a while since I was a regular on the Estie board there, but I know it well.
Okay, pens--I'm an Estie freak. Esterbrooks are the best possible combination of vintage, quirky, collectible, effective, and cheap. I have a red J with a 9556, green SJ with a 9668, root beer LJ with a 9550 for class notes (I take really small notes), and a grey $1.50 pen with a stub flex 2788--the stub's not usual, but the flex is. Sadly, I lost an exquisitely marbled red transitional J with a late '40's 9668 that wrote on the fine side--such a nice pen!
For those of you who don't hang around fountain pen forums and shows, those numbers refer to the nibs each pen has; with Esties, you can unscrew the old nib and put in a new one if you want. It keeps you from having to buy a whole new pen just because you want one that writes differently.
Inks I have too many of. My grey Estie uses Organics Studio Manganate V blue-black, developed in College Park, while the root beer LJ has De Atramentis Barolo, which is actually made with wine! Of course, I also have some Iroshizuku Syro-Ro that I use in dip pens mostly, and Visconti Blue for when you need the Best Blue Ever.
Paper? I love Original Crown Mill. Got some from a stationer's on Oxford's High Street, and had resigned myself to the fact that nobody in a metro area of 3 million carried it when Goulet started to. Now I use it all the time...well, along with G. Lalo Verge and that papier paille I ordered from Paris.
And that's the short list. There's lots more where those came from.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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loggats
Shipmate
# 17643
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Posted
Great collection! I'm more of a magpie and collect random pens that interest me, usually because of their super flex nibs - Vintage Waterman are my current favourites, and a contemporary Pilot Namiki with a customised "Spenserian" nib. I like using dip pens too, right now I'm playing around with Speedball's superfine Crow Quill.
Ink - I mostly collect brown inks in various shades, and have a few bottles of Penman Mocha (sadly discontinued) that are a pure delight to use. Unfortunately most of my pens don't like it much, and prefer Diamine saddle brown. I've been meaning to try a bottle of Herbin's beautifully balanced Lie de The. Otherwise I use Iroshizuku fuyu-syogun (about as close to blue as I ever get) or Diamine Oxblood (closest I get to red, though it's more brown than anything. Or a sort of dried blood red).
Paper - agree with you about Crown Mill. I got given a box of their pure cotton paper a while back and I like it, but it's just so... bright. For general note taking I'm completely devoted to Midori's products - it's like writing on glass (I prefer very very smooth paper). I'm still looking for the perfect paper though, something onion-skin thin in off-white that doesn't shadow or have any bleed-through (or get too easily cut by the fierce point on my custom Namiki).
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"He brought me into the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love."
Posts: 245 | Registered: Apr 2013
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Not sure if I'm qualified to post to this thread, but anyway. I still have the fountain pens I used more than 30 years ago at school and they get an airing from time to time. They aren't new. They're almost all the originals with the bladder that you have to squeeze to fill up, though one or two will take cartridges as well. They tend to leak a bit now so I don't use them as much.
My two favourites are a dark blue Parker with a very fine nib that I was given as a teenager for my birthday and have always liked, and a cheap Platignum one (Platignum were the workhorses of the day, so most of us used them for school) with an italic nib that I like a lot. The Parker dates from the 50s.
Do I do much handwriting - no, not these days but I've no objection to it - you get tired of clattering on keypads. I don't like using ballpoints.
Paper in an ideal world would be sheets of cream-coloured paper, but nobody writes letters any more. Inks, I have a variety of colours in bottles that have lasted for years. I have a preference for Quink simply because the smell is so evocative - one sniff of that and you're immediately transported back years to childhood, to classrooms with real blackboards and chalk, where there are desks in rows, and the desks have filthy little inkwells filled with a mixture of chalk dust, school ink and whatever else bored schoolchildren decided to maliciously add during lessons.
I used to long for brown ink as a teenager but it was never available, so my best friend and I blended our own colours. She went for the mauve end of the spectrum, I went for the brown and we experimented wildly. After a while the teachers put a stop to the multicoloured homework and we were told that from now on, we would have to restrict ourselves to blue or black. I was quite upset by this as I'd just managed to buy a bottle of a beautiful shade of peacock green, but there was nothing to be done.
[ 05. May 2013, 06:31: Message edited by: Ariel ]
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
MB Meisterstück 146
Iroshizuku tsuki-yo
Clairefontaine
Every day.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Haydee
Shipmate
# 14734
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Posted
A bottle green Parker that my grandparents gave to my mother when she started grammar school in 1951, and a black Platignum my father wrote textbooks with in the 1960s! Sadly both leak now so I can't use everyday.
And Quink, for the full nostalgia kick...
Posts: 433 | Registered: Apr 2009
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
I have a cross fountain pen, which I use pretty often, whenever I am doing consistent hand writing (which I do pretty often). However I am afraid my most regular fountain pens are from Waitrose and cost all of £4! At this price buying them and using cartridges is cheaper than buying ball points.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
I received a Parker Duofold for my 18th birthday and have used it ever since. (It's the same pen despite a replacement lid and a replacement nib, right?)
Depending on what I'm doing in life, sometimes it's used for little more than writing shopping lists, but it's a joy to use and I feel sorry for people who don't use anything other than biros.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I used to do calligraphy, so I had one or two pens - Schaeffer I think - and a great many screw-in nibs. Ink was always the blackest that could be got, of course. Ordinary writing was with a Parker fine italic.
I still love pens as objects - the other day I came across some Mont Blanc rip-offs I bought in HK years ago, which gave me an excuse to go to the local Pen Shop for refills (and to ogle the stock).
We have a household penchant for pens crafted from wood. We have an elegant Japanese style one with the slight curve of a samurai sword: an African one I got in Stellenbosch and the favourite - and most used - a wonderfully heavy one made of Irish bog oak with a rhodium-plated nib.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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The Midge
Shipmate
# 2398
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Posted
I use Rotring Art Pens for garden plans and sketching. And i prefer to write with fountain pens. They make my writing neater. We were not allowed write with biros at school.
One day we were told off by the deputy head mistressfor using roler balls and that we were to use "real ink".
The class wag responded "If rollers balls don't write with real ink then what is it?".
Reminds me of Pauline: They've got pens.
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Some days you are the fly.
On other days you are the windscreen.
Posts: 1085 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Desert Daughter
Shipmate
# 13635
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Posted
I inherited my father's Montblanc fountain pen and use it every day. Fortunately I have a set of (geographically) faraway friends who share in my passion for letters written on nice, heavy paper with quality ink and a good fountain pen. That is the way we communicate (the odd pone call excepted). Google will never know what we talk about... ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ...
Actually one of these friends is quite an accomplished calligrapher; her letters are objects of such beauty that I framed some of them and hung them in my library.
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"Prayer is the rejection of concepts." (Evagrius Ponticus)
Posts: 733 | Registered: Apr 2008
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I use a fairly recent Parker not especially fancy but the nib suits me well and I recently had a new bladder fitted which cost more than the pen originally did. At home I use a dip and scratch so I can justify having a victorian inkstand on my desk. A trip to the local second hand shop recently netted a fine haul of nibs from the thirties, mainly Gillots, GPO or railway styles.I used an LMS telegraph pen only an hour ago...lovely!
Posts: 1262 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I am prejudiced against dip pens since that is what we learnt writing with in My Day. You got a new nib about every 4 weeks - but the ink was vile, corrosive stuff, so after the first few days it was scratch, scratch.
I have - somewhere -
Edward Johnston's classic work on lettering, and always meant to try cutting a quill pen. A friend brought me some goose feathers from The Falklands (she was on the last ship out before the invasion, as it happens), but I never managed to produce a satisfactory nib.
I look at MS books with interest, because I know exactly how you trace each letter. Us scribes.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I went through a phase of making my own quill pens. They were very blotty - there's definitely a knack to this.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I was looking at this MS in Chichester Cathedral a little while so. Either a metal nib or a brush - given the size and concision of the lettering, hard not to think the former.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Metal nib, definitely. Far too regular and even, and the tips of the letters are squared off.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Bene Gesserit
Shipmate
# 14718
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Posted
I use a Parker (one of the cheap ones!) most days - especially if I'm making notes of or noting the actions of a meeting.
I agree with Ariel about brown ink - I was trying unsuccessfully to track some down last year.
I remember Platignum pens from school, they always, but always, leaked. Horrible things.
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Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Posts: 405 | From: Flatlands of the East | Registered: Apr 2009
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St Everild
Shipmate
# 3626
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Posted
Waterman, Parker sonnet and a Lamy.
I like the Lamy best.
Posts: 1782 | From: Bethnei | Registered: Dec 2002
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
I love pens and paper. I have two Schaeffer calligraphy pens and a nice assortment of nibs. I also have a little Parker fountain pen for regular shopping lists and things.
My big problem, I hate to write. It hurts my hand, always has. (I tell my students I only write for the people I love the most, so they should read their practicing notes!!!)
My inks are so lovely! The ones in the little bottles just look so right, and the cartridges have lovely colors.
I wish I could do them justice. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
Waterman, customized italic nib. For letters written at home, vintage Banque nationale de Canada dip pen from the 1920s, fine italic nib.
Vergé de France paper, A4 folded, usually with mock letterheads (Interspecies Marriage Tribunal, Chancery Office, Diocese of the Moon used today and yesterday, Metropolitan Toronto Bicycle Tuning Service, Rob Ford Building, Toronto).
For ink, I have a range of the Herbin inks: Poussière de Lune for prelates; for lesser clergy, I try to use what is closest to colour of the day but, frankly, it's often too much bother and they get whatever might be in the pen. Letter dating always by BCP sanctoral, especially and definitely for RCs; Anglicans usually get Russian Orthodox dating, preferring feasts of new martyrs.
I maintain paper correspondence with about a dozen friends on odd parts of the planet, but do much of my letter-writing when on the road, it being a socially acceptable activity when sitting at cafés.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
Okay, now that I'm at a proper keyboard (ironic, no?), time for the more in-depth postery...
I have an old Moore pen with what I very much suspect is a 22 or 24 kt gold nib—wet noodle, almost to Waterman level, perfect for people like me who spent school using delicate mechanical pencils and need all the flex we can get to bring out our naturally light hands. Anything else and the flex rarely comes out; as a result, I prefer stub nibs. I have a Lamy Safari-based pen (it's whatever the calligrapher's Safari is) that has a 1.9 mm stub nib that I use for calligraphy; as many of my friends can tell you, I have been known to send letters done in Carolingian minuscule...and in Latin.
Not that many of them can read it, mind you, but when was the last time you got a letter dated using the old Roman system?
For artwork, I have my first pen, an EF nib Lamy Safari, and a Noodler's brush pen, in addition to my Esterbrooks. The Lamy has a great nib for line work, while brush pens...well, they take some getting used to, and I wouldn't recommend trying to write cursive with them, but they're a great help for art—I begin to see why cartoonists love them. The vintage dip nibs, especially with the shellac-based inks, produce really cool (and really heavily flexed!) letters, but the giant blob you sometimes get at the start makes them a tad hard to use.
There's also the MB Homage á Fredric Chopin with platinum accents I got from my parents when I graduated high school; I used to use it for writing long letters, but now use it mostly for signing official forms and rent checks. There's something about using that pen for unpleasant tasks that makes them...less unpleasant. Like most MB's, it can be cranky and fussy if I've let it sit for too long, and needs constant cleaning, but when it works, it works wonderfully.
That said, having used an S.T. Dupont, I more than kinda want one. Somewhere, there's a Neoclasique that needs a new owner...
Also, notebooks. I had a Moleskine that I drove into the ground my first couple years of grad school before I got my hands on an escaped convict orange Rhodia Webnotebook. Yes, I'm part of the cult of Rhodia (those of you who like smooth paper should be too), at least for notetaking. Lately, however, I've been fond of my red Leuchtturm 1917, especially its table of contents—it makes a great "random stuff" notebook, which is great, since it holds everything from notes on international copyright law to a tour of the Library of Congress rare books collection. If you think you liked Moleskine, you should check out Leuchtturm.
For letters, I like textured paper. Sure, it means I have to use a bit more of a broadly nibbed pen—fine nibs catch in the chain lines of the paper, or the verge—but it's so much better to handle. Letters should be aware of the fact that they are physical objects handed from one person to another; smooth paper seems to be a denial of this essential physicality, an attempt to overcome it, while thick, subtly textured paper is a chance to embrace it. Then again, I'm also a sucker for anything letterpress (you can actually feel the letters in the page), so my "physicality over practicality" card is punched.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
Vergé de France paper, A4 folded, usually with mock letterheads (Interspecies Marriage Tribunal, Chancery Office, Diocese of the Moon used today and yesterday, Metropolitan Toronto Bicycle Tuning Service, Rob Ford Building, Toronto).
For ink, I have a range of the Herbin inks: Poussière de Lune for prelates; for lesser clergy, I try to use what is closest to colour of the day but, frankly, it's often too much bother and they get whatever might be in the pen. Letter dating always by BCP sanctoral, especially and definitely for RCs; Anglicans usually get Russian Orthodox dating, preferring feasts of new martyrs.
These all sound like things I'd do, especially the seasonally/personally appropriate inks and weird dates. I've been known to use Roman dates (as mentioned above), but tend towards the French revolutionary calendar (15 Floréal CCXXI) since it's just so much weirder. Also, I miss my bottle of Lierre Sauvage; it was one of the defective/recalled ones that had bottle slime issues. Such a great green, though. I've been using the blue-green Syo-Ro (looked it up again—"pine tree dew" sums it up perfectly if you're thinking of Japanese pines or blue Atlas cedars), but it's Just Not The Same.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Pens Sheaffer with medium thickness nib. Have a standby Parker as well.
Paper White, paid (never woven), address engraved - but do have an embosser inherited with the house.
Ink Always black.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
I inherited a gold-plated fountain pen from my Grandfather some years ago, along with what appear to be a couple of inkwells. (Only just found when cleaning out the house for a move.) He died over 50 years ago, and I doubt my mother ever used it in the intervening years.
Are there any recommendations for cleaning and/or refurbishing old pens? I suspect that there may well be dried ink in it.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I also suspect it will have a rubber innard (is there a little lever in the barrel used to pump the ink?) it's reasonable to suppose that will have perished. Have you tried taking it apart?
Flushing/soaking with hot water should get rid of dried ink.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Carex:
Are there any recommendations for cleaning and/or refurbishing old pens? I suspect that there may well be dried ink in it.
If it's a bladder-fill, lever-action pen (as many were back then), you just have to replace the bladder. Which is a pretty simple operation, all told, but you'll probably want to have somebody else do it. Anything more exotic, though, and things could get complicated, especially if it's a rare/limited edition pen; some very odd filling mechanisms found their way into production pens. The really sadistic ones, though, like aerometric or vacumetric fills, probably won't be on a pen that old.
You'll probably just have to get it resaced. Nothing too horribly expensive.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Carex:
Are there any recommendations for cleaning and/or refurbishing old pens? I suspect that there may well be dried ink in it.
You will know quite simply if there is, just by attempting to fill the pen with water.
Dried ink can be removed, but will take a few goes. You'll need to flush it out a few times, then leave it filled with clear water overnight, then repeat the process in the morning until the water runs clear. Be sure to wash out the cap of the pen as well and clean it inside and dry it, as ink often collects in here.
Also, if the nib is one of the removable kinds (probably not on something over 50 years old), do so, wash the nib under running water until reasonably clear, then leave to soak overnight, rinse in the morning until the water runs clear. If it isn't you will need to prop the pen up in a small glass of water overnight and then keep on filling and emptying in the morning until you get reasonably clear water.
One danger with the older pens is that the bladder may show signs of perishing; if so, you'll need to get it replaced. At this point you may be able to ask your pen repairer if they can either put a new ink bladder into it or else convert it so that it can take cartridges.
But if it looks in reasonable condition then after some cleaning you could be ok to use it. I do advise an overnight soak though, because with long-term ingrained ink, even if the water runs clear after a few minutes you may find that the next morning the soaking process has loosened enough particles on the inside to significantly colour the water - or change the colour of any new ink you filled it with.
[ 07. May 2013, 05:04: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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