Fountain pens

[touchingcloth]

Do kids still use fountain pens at school? Most kids (or was it just my mates?) at my school used fountain pens. I remember the whole intricate web of pen-related decisions. You wanted blue ink cartridges, so you could use an eraser pen. "Have you got a spare cartridge?" "Only black" "I'll have to scribble out the mistakes then". Sometimes the barrel would split and it would all fall apart, then the new pen would be scratchy until the nib wore away to suit the angle of your hand.

Or you could use a biro, and tippex - but it seemed a lesser option. The whole ink-cartridge business just seemed more fun. Satisfying little interlude in the tedium of class, snapping a new one in.

A bit Proustian for me, this post.

Pens used to have space for a spare cartridge above the loaded one, right? I think for a time I had a cartridge that was like a syringe, with a plunger on it which you could use the refill it from an ink jar, with the withdrawn plunger taking up the space inside the pen which would normally be filled by a spare cartridge. Is that a thing, or have I completely made that up?

Long cartridges were also a thing I seem to remember. Some of them cylindrical, others tapering.

New penge cunt.

[seepage]

Someone in my class had a compulsion to eat the cartridges so had to be kept away from them. But of course that was easier said than done so soon there'd be another "Sir, xxx has eaten another one!", followed by them being led out of class covered in blue ink.

[Blue Jam]

What are you guys writing on paper so much as to want to invest in a nice pen?

I write in a lab book every day.

What makes a pen desirable? Are there qualities which make some massively more effective than others, or is it more like watches where their desirability isn't linked to their usefulness?

That sounds a bit inversely snobbish, but I'm genuinely interested as before this thread (and the discussion in another recent thread which probably sparked it) I hadn't thought about fountain pens since I was in school, and I didn't know there were people who loved them.

That's not snobbish, that's a perfectly good question.

I'd say: Springy and responsive nib, sturdy but not too stiff (oo-er), smooth tip which glides over paper and isn't scratchy. That goes for all pens, but factors which are dependent on the user are: comfortable grip which is the right width for the hand, good weight and balance, feels comfortable over long periods of use.

There is a degree of craftsmanship involved in all that but not really to the degree that I'd be prepared to spend a few hundred pounds on a Mont Blanc. It's not rocket science, you can pay a fraction of that and still get a pen that writes nicely. Also you could spend a small fortune on a Mont Blanc and then find a Parker Jotter just feels nicer in your hand and is better suited to your writing style. That said the status symbol aspect might be important to some people, and Mont Blanc pens appreciate in value so I guess they're an investment buy to some.

The rest is just aesthetics, but part of the appeal of fountain pens is that they're not single-use and disposable like biros. When you buy a fountain pen you know you'll probably still be using it years later so it's nice to choose a design you'll enjoy looking at over all that time.

---

My Life In Fountain Pens, then:

I grew up with Sheaffer pens- my dad liked the Triumph pens and I used the No Nonsense pens for school:



I was never into Parker or Lamy pens, my hands aren't very dainty so I prefer a proper chonky pen, and the No Nonsense pens were just what I found comfortable. Also the design is quite old skool and they came in a lot of fun colours. And they cost about a fiver. Sheaffer discontinued them a while back but you can still find them on eBay, and I used to buy them occasionally to use as my work pen until I discovered the Kaweco Sport pens, which are similarly cheap and cheerful and colourful and chonky, while also being well-made and nice to write with.

My dad had a gold-plated Sheaffer Triumph Imperial which I inherited, along with a matching a matching ballpoint pen and mechanical pencil. I think this set is from the 1970's:



Love those chonky Triumph nibs. Fountain pen is vac-fill only but in any case I wouldn't dare take this one to work. On close inspection you can see the gold plating on the fountain pen and pencil is quite worn while the ballpoint pen looks a lot less worn. Looks like my dad never liked biros either and that must be where I get my dislike of them from, heheh.

I also had a 1980's Sheaffer Triumph Imperial in brushed chrome which I got off eBay for about £20. It looked like this one:



I lost it a few years ago but it was a bit leaky so it was probably for the best. It was a "flighter" in appearance only.

Not bought a Sheaffer since as I don't like their newer designs, though the Sheaffer "Pop" pens are quite fun:

https://www.sheaffer.com/sh_en_us/e0920751s

Got a Cross pen as a gift from Mr Jam's lovely family:



This one feels nice and solid and heavy, the enameled surface is pretty and has a lovely depth of colour and feels nice against my hand, the grip is good and it writes really smoothly. I was also given a nice leather case for it. It was a lovely gift but I don't take it to work too often, certainly not to the lab. Good quality, you don't need to fork out for a Mont Blanc when you can get something like this by Cross.

Current pocket pen- Kaweco Sport in green with a gold pocket clip:



Also got the Kaweco Sport Skyline pencil in grey with a chrome clip, for labelling microscope slides. Love the deep grey:



Finally, my current favourite, which lives on my desk:



This one is just so heavy and chunky, lovely to just hold and a joy to write with.

In short, I tend to go for chunky pens, old-school designs and fun colours. Not really into Mont Blancs and the status symbol aspect, I was something fun and practical.

[Blue Jam]

Pens used to have space for a spare cartridge above the loaded one, right? I think for a time I had a cartridge that was like a syringe, with a plunger on it which you could use the refill it from an ink jar, with the withdrawn plunger taking up the space inside the pen which would normally be filled by a spare cartridge. Is that a thing, or have I completely made that up?

That's a converter. You clip one of those into a cartridge pen and you can use bottled ink in any colour you like. Great if you can't find any green ink cartridges and you have an urgent need to write to the Daily Mail letters page.

[Fr.Bigley]

I don't know whether the humongous size of these images is ineptness on your part or deliberate to hammer the point home. Either way, I love it.

Please feel free to draw your own conclusions. I tend to hammer points more often than not.

[Starlit]

The last time that I used a fountain pen regularly was at school, where we graduated from pencil to fountain pen when moving from junior to senior school (ball points were pensona non grata at all levels of the school).
I immediately lost the Parker fountain pen that I was given at the time, so used various cheap ones for a while until I found a Rotring fountain pen that either had no nib or a round nib. I can't find a picture of it, but it was like a fat version of one of their technical drawing pens.
It was a good pen, wrote smoothly and meant that I didn't have to worry about dragging the nib in the wrong direction.

I'd like to try a fountain pen again, as I think that my handwriting is  lot better now then when I was at school and I enjoy writing, but it wouldn't be right for work. I mostly use a Paper Mate fibre tip which I really like, particularly when it's gets broken in after about a week.

I'm probably going to end up buying one anyway, as all the chat and pictures in this thread are like catnip to me. I bought a watch that I didn't know I wanted until there was some watch chat on here a while back.

[Fry]

Pens! Remember pens!??? I haven't thought about pens in years. White dog poo and pens.

[Blinder Data]

Thank you to everyone treating this topic with the seriousness it merits, especially Blue Jam. I've been getting deeper into the subculture of fountain pen fandom, reading ink reviews like there's no tomorrow - it's a truly wondrous ride.

I want to hear more from studpuppet though. You casually mentioned that you have between 50 and 100 fountain pens...! Is maintaining them not a full-time job? How many do you have "on the go"? Would love to know your top ten or five pens of all-time...

[Replies From View]

I want to get a dark non-blue ink for it. Any recommendations?

Might sound strange but I love using brown ink in my favourite fountain pens.

[Replies From View]

At school I once swapped a hoard of assorted gubbins (including a copy of the Stranglers' No More Heroes 7" in a picture sleeve) for a Parker 51 with a nice Prussian blue barrel, and then couldn't get on with the titchy nib and ended up switching to a Parker 25.  I've still got a '25 somewhere (with black rather than blue trim).



I haven't used a fountain pen for ages. I'm a fibre-tiper these days; a favourite is the Uni-PIN Fine Line.

Parker 51 was a weird one.  It was just as biros were starting to become stable enough to render fountain pens for everyday use obsolete, and the smaller visible nib of the 51 seemed (to my eyes) to he an attempt to sit aesthetically within the biro world, rather than stand away from it.

They were notoriously smooth to write with, though.  Some people swear by them as their daily writer to this day.

[Replies From View]

Regarding school fountain pennery, the main thing to do was just sit the nib on a page until a giant ink blot was generated.  Worked especially well in the jotters or "rough books" which inexplicably used highly absorbent paper, which would then likewise clog up the nib itself with strands.

[the hum]

I'm no fountain pen connoisseur, but in a spate of romantic whimsy a year or two back - and because I was starting an OU degree and knew I'd likely be doing a lot of note taking, I bought a cheap but nice looking Chinese knock-off one from eBay (brand is "Jinhao"). It cost less than a tenner, but happy to report I love it and use it for said note taking all the time. It does need refilling fairly often, but I presume that's par for the course with these implements.

[paruses]

I'm no fountain pen connoisseur, but in a spate of romantic whimsy a year or two back - and because I was starting an OU degree and knew I'd likely be doing a lot of note taking, I bought a cheap but nice looking Chinese knock-off one from eBay (brand is "Jinhao"). It cost less than a tenner, but happy to report I love it and use it for said note taking all the time. It does need refilling fairly often, but I presume that's par for the course with these implements.

I haven't had to do any sustained note taking or writing for a long time but last year I did a certification and filled a whole notepad. I loved that enforced break and sense of satisfaction of having to change the cartridge a couple of times (as someone mentioned upthread too).

Might sound strange but I love using brown ink in my favourite fountain pens.

I have a bottle of brown ink that I think is French and I love it.

[Claire De Eyre]

We were having a discussion on another forum about fountain pens because a programme currently on the telly had each of the main characters using one. (Maybe the same programme sparked discussion about them on this forum!) Many of us wondered about the popularity and appeal of fountain pens, so this has been interesting. I last used one as a youngster at school. Though I've never had urges to nosh on the cartridges, I'm a bit of a klutz so would most likely not invest in one myself. I'd surely be covered in ink daily, not to mention my furniture, hardwood, rugs. A shame, because the fountain pens posted here are rather attractive and after all this talk of them, I think I may want to try one out again!

[studpuppet]

If you want to go down the rabbit hole, FPN is the best place IMO. It's good because there are so many different facets of fountain pen usage: usable pens, collectable pens, the right choice of paper, ink, nib type etc. There are people who make their own pens at home, a section about cursive writing, and a section for loaning out pens to anyone new to fountain pens that wants to give them a try (tends to be more US-based).

There's even a CaB-style Chatter section where Brits, Yanks and various others collide (the Americans have even learned to stop taking photos of their favourite pens alongside their personal weaponry, for fear of upsetting the international community).

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/

[jobotic]

Did Little Blue die for nothing?*




_{* no, he didn't. He went blue}

[idunnosomename]

https://www.penisland.net/

i went to penisland.com and it went through a bunch of redirects and I ended up with a job via cucumber recruitment as a support worker in Crewe.

[JaDanketies]

I need a hobby. I'm not even particularly into UK comedy tbh. Would be great to be into pens and posting about pens on the internet with some other pen enthusiasts. I think I got embedded in CaB because my old hobby was trolling Graham Linehan. Fountain pens are a much cooler hobby.

[Neomod]

I bought a cheap but nice looking Chinese knock-off one from eBay (brand is "Jinhao"). It cost less than a tenner, but happy to report I love it and use it for said note taking all the time. It does need refilling fairly often, but I presume that's par for the course with these implements.

I've got about 5 of these in various styles, weights and nib sizes. Haven't been disappointed yet.

Not a fan of the design of those Kaweco Sports.

Oh and anyone off hand know the etymology of 'posting'?

[DocDaneeka]

Finally got myself an Ackerman Pen! https://ackermanpens.com/


Look at that interplay between thick and thin!

It uses a G Nib which is still one of the more popular tools actual Manga artists use.

I started using it with some Platinum Carbon ink but it started feathering a bit so I have switched to full on india ink.
And it actually does work, I don't think I'll leave it in the pen for more than a few days but cleaning the feed isn't too hard and it feels a lot more sturdy than your traditional feeds.

[studpuppet]

Finally got myself an Ackerman Pen! https://ackermanpens.com/

Nice! (artwork AND pen) - they're pretty affordable as well. Do they have a European distributor?

[studpuppet]

I actually came here to post that I've just caught up with series 4 of Unforgotten, and a fountain pen stab to the head turns out to be the cause of death. Always nice to see a hobby represented on TV!

[Replies From View]

Parker Sonnet is my favourite daily writer.  Has to be a fine nib for me.

[DocDaneeka]

Nice! (artwork AND pen) - they're pretty affordable as well. Do they have a European distributor?

Sadly not I went through their amazon shop in the end as I had heard some bad things about the ackerman customer service. Either way you have to wait a bit for delivery and it's more like 35 quid.

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

I have a load of Lamy pens - used to have olive green ink to match my old employer's corporate colour. And then I have orange ink now.

[Blue Jam]

Got the silver one of these for Xmas:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/OHTO-Tasche-Silver-Fountain-Writing/dp/B005H9E6PO/



Never heard of the brand before but I fancied a new compact pen for werk and I liked the look of this one. Inexpensive but a gawjus little writer. So smooth and I'm seriously impressed with it. Any Ohto enjoyers here?

[Neomod]

I take it that's too small to use with a converter. Looks nice though.

[Blue Jam]

It takes bog-standard cheapo cartridges. Body may be a bit too short for a converter tho.

They also do a chonkier aluminium pen called THE DUDE:

[Replies From View]

They also do a stubby and flaccid variant called YOUR DAD

[ishantbekeepingit]

wrt to the uses of pens - I can't be doing with taking notes on a computer, having to root around a file system to open up a text file with all your stuff in, and the most you can do for a layout is tabs and spaces, not to mention you have to move your hands from keyboard to mouse to keyboard to edit notes somewhere else, and you have to make sure you save it if you want to have it for future reference - now you have to come up with a name and a location for it.  Phones are even worse - fiddly controls, a keyboard that covers up half the screen when you want to be writing, and an interface carefully designed with the assumption that you're a dribbling idiot who isn't allowed to have a look at the actual workings of your own property, so you have to deal with it all through locked-down programs, only they're called apps because some cunt at Apple decided that the word program was too scawy or something.  I much prefer dealing with paper, arranging and crossing out as I see fit, putting the bits of paper all around my desk/table/legs the way I want them and having them to hand until I decide to chuck them out.

Can't have fancy pens, though.  I'm a chewer.