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Let the Fountain Pens Flow

nytimes.com

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Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#61

Post by JohnBooty »

jypepin wrote: post #55

I grew up in France, where schools don't allow you to use anything else but fountain pens. They don't teach you how to use one - to me, it's always been the same thing as using a ball pen, except you trade the convenience (you have to change the ink cartridge) for practicality (you can erase the ink with special eraser) while keeping some style (it's still ink, not pencil, kept for drawing). Getting a new pen felt we…

Thanks for posting that. I'd no idea fountain pens were the standard in some countries.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#62

Post by JohnBooty »

mfringel wrote: post #24

I started using fountain pens a couple of years ago, and still do for my daily writing. I write rather a lot; I don't bring my laptop into meetings unless I need to. Combine that with my handwriting being relatively neat, small, and stylized, and I needed something with a sufficiently fine nib, and ink that would flow well through it. It turned into a fascinating optimization problem, during which I ended up down the…

This is why I won't let myself get started on fountain pens. I tend to go down the rabbit hole hard when I pick up a new hobby, and fountain pens have always seemed like such an enticing rabbit hole to dive into!

Three months into the hobby I'd probably have two desk drawers full of pen paraphernalia and a credit card bill full of shame! Not that other pen freaks do this. I just know I would.

(and I'm left-handed....)

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#63

Post by erbium »

mfringel wrote: post #24

I started using fountain pens a couple of years ago, and still do for my daily writing. I write rather a lot; I don't bring my laptop into meetings unless I need to. Combine that with my handwriting being relatively neat, small, and stylized, and I needed something with a sufficiently fine nib, and ink that would flow well through it. It turned into a fascinating optimization problem, during which I ended up down the…

I just stopped using fountain pens when my $3 ones broke

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#64

Post by JohnBooty »

jdietrich wrote: post #57
chrisseaton wrote: post #12

In the UK I think every school child still learns to write with a fountain pen around the age of seven. There's one particular cheap plastic pen that everyone used to have that stationers sold in bulk. I had to do a sort of thesis about a topic I was interested in and hand-write it in a fountain pen to become a 'master scribe' or something like that - I did mine about special effects in film.

One of the many, many lies I was told at primary school: "You need to learn to use a fountain pen, because you have to use one at secondary school". Nobody used a fountain pen at secondary school.

Similar to the lie I heard about computers from one particular teacher in high school: "You can't use a mouse, because nobody uses a mouse in the real world!"

This was in 1994 and it hadn't been true for quite some time!

(In her defense, WordPerfect 5.1 was a heck of a lot more productive with keyboard shortcuts, especially if you had the little "cheat sheet" to place atop the function key row on your keyboard, and of course developers and other engineers know the benefits of minimizing the need to remove one's hands from the keyboard as well)

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#65

Post by JohnBooty »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #21
sieabahlpark wrote: post #10

> Packed around a table with notepads and test pens, the group, ethnically diverse but mostly men, lacked the slick appearance you expect of customers at a luxury boutique. Why do we have to know the demographics? How is it pertinent info, and why is it bad that it was mostly men?

The demographics are the least of it. The whole article reeks of a kind of superficiality and condescension: "...who had the handsomeness of a 1950s young dad, thick hair like mink, broad shoulders, a warm handshake." I do wish that when newspapers describe a trend, they would stop trying to write literature and simply provide the information. If I want more detail with off-topic asides, I'll subscribe to a magazine…

Honest question. How would one write about a trend/subculture/community/etc without... writing about the sorts of people who comprise it and the community itself? As somebody who's always been into pens but never taken the plunge into fountain pens, I found this to be the most interesting part of the article.

Sure, it could have been a simple list of links about places where one can buy pens or whatever. But I already have Google and a Reddit account for that.

If I'm reading an article in the NYT or some other publication, the bare minimum I'd expect would be for them to for them to bring some things to the table that I can't get from thirty seconds of Googling or looking for the most popular relevant subreddit.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#66

Post by JohnBooty »

sieabahlpark wrote: post #10

> Packed around a table with notepads and test pens, the group, ethnically diverse but mostly men, lacked the slick appearance you expect of customers at a luxury boutique. Why do we have to know the demographics? How is it pertinent info, and why is it bad that it was mostly men?

    why is it bad that it was mostly men?
Where did the article say/imply that?

I don't think it's a bad thing, and I don't feel the article said/implied that it was either.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#67

Post by spapas82 »

MBCook wrote: post #15

You can get a Pilot Metropolitan from Amazon for about $14, and there are other fountain pens that are a little cheaper. It’s not like you need to spend $120 to start trying. I started maybe two years ago with a set of Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens that I bought from Amazon for $9 or so. I liked the feeling so when one of them started to run low on ink I decided to buy a ‘real’ (non-disposable) fountain pen.…

Also there are Jinhao pens (and other chinese pens like Hero etc) from eBay for 1-2 dollars. I've bought a dozen I liked and have to say that although some of them were rather problematic (leaking ink, non smooth writing), most of them write really good and are very beautiful and looking much more expensive than their real price point.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#68

Post by abtinf »

paviva wrote: post #49
hetman wrote: post #32

For the veterans. Can anyone make any ink recommendations for inks that don't bleed to the point of completely obscuring the text when the paper is later exposed to a little water?

Use an iron gall ink, such as this one : http://www.registrarsink.co.uk/

From what I’ve read, iron gall inks are only suitable for use with gold nibs. They will rapidly corrode steel nibs.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#69

Post by abtinf »

hetman wrote: post #32

For the veterans. Can anyone make any ink recommendations for inks that don't bleed to the point of completely obscuring the text when the paper is later exposed to a little water?

Two of my favorite inks are waterproof: Noodler’s Baystate Blue is gorgeous and removable only with bleach or very hard scrubbing (filling a pen with it is something of a terrifying ritual); and Noodler’s Warden series Bad Black Moccasin is everything-proof and the smoothest ink I’ve ever used.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#70

Post by andrelaszlo »

MBCook wrote: post #15

You can get a Pilot Metropolitan from Amazon for about $14, and there are other fountain pens that are a little cheaper. It’s not like you need to spend $120 to start trying. I started maybe two years ago with a set of Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens that I bought from Amazon for $9 or so. I liked the feeling so when one of them started to run low on ink I decided to buy a ‘real’ (non-disposable) fountain pen.…

I like the reviews on https://www.penaddict.com/top-5-pens/ They have sections for different budgets etc. I have no connection to them, my handwriting is terrible. I just like the site :)
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