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Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

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161–170 of 206 posts

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for variously-coloured pencils, but I've had a lot of success with a grid-ruled moleskine (I usually went for hardcover, but after accidentally ordering a soft cover, I'm warming up to it) and a Rotring 0.5mm mechanical pencil with Pentel 2H leads. For colours, I tend to use the Bic 4-in-one coloured pen (the one with the blue bottom and white top), though I don't bring that out often.

I mentioned in another post, but you need to try the Uni version of that Bic. I got a 3 color. I feels only slightly larger than a regular pen, and writes vastly better than the Bic. They’re more expensive in absolutely terms but still around $6.

Do you have a shopping link or SKU? I'm having some trouble finding it, but it sounds compelling!

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#163

I've only had bad experiences with Parker pens and refills, they just don't flow and fill the line as nicely and constantly as Pilot Hi-Tec and other Pilot pens. I paid more than 20€ for a Parker pen with refills and it was worse than a 3€ Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint (which is my current favourite, I have it in black, red, green, blue and pink colours).

Parker refills are a nightmare. I have tested both the Indian brand and the French brand of QuinkFlow several times, and they are all horrible. Atrocious. I got some Monteverde, Pelikan and Schneier refills and they work well. If you can get a compatible Monteverde, it is great. Schneier is also very nice, but hybrid. Pelikan has the pelikan blue style, you either love it or hate it. QuinkFlow... ok, whoever says the…

Ive had good luck with ‘Monteverde Capless Gel Ballpoint’ refills for my Rotring 600s.

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#164
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the EasyFlow 9000 very well, because even on Clairefontaine paper it doesn't live up to its name. I have one in an Ohto Rays for the retro vibe, but it's the pen I keep in my bag to have something nice I won't mind giving away. Even compared to Ohto's stock gel refill, the EasyFlow just writes lousy. Try moving one nib size up with the Vanishing Point, especially if you're used to Western pens. Pilot's E…

I'll check out the Decimo! And maybe I should just size up my Vanishing Point nib. I've had it for a few years and it's just too scratchy. I have a few other fun (relatively) cheap fountain pens I like: brass Kaweko Sport, Muji fountain pen, other random finds. However, the downside of fountain pens if that if you don't use them, you end up with a bunch of clogged nibs.

It's worth going deep more than broad, in my view, and taking an intentionally instrumental interest in the tool; fountain pens have never been a hobby for me, but rather a means in support of my practices as a notetaker and diarist, to the tune of 25 A5 volumes and about 4100 pages' worth since early 2018. These days it takes me four or five pages at once to notice any tiring or discomfort, and no pen that insists on itself even slightly could hold up to that kind of expectation. (Indeed I judge the Decimo more favorably than the 51 precisely because the latter pen tries my endurance much more, especially when I post its overweight and unbalancing cap.) Think of it like photography or high-end audio; here too we see the same sharply unfavorable knee in the middle of the price/performance curve, past which returns rapidly diminish and one mostly ceases to impress the savvy with anything beyond one's readiness to spend. (D850, not M10 Monochrom; HD6XX, not HD 800 S.)

I mean, I wouldn't turn my nose up at a $1000 handmade Pilot Urushi but I surely also would not buy one, not at least unless I meant to try to make flirting with ambassadors more than a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It's a beautiful pen and I'm sure it functions superlatively! Just that it belongs in far finer and less hardly used hands than mine. Good grief, I sometimes feel I make even my Decimo look like a sewing needle, and that isn't really at all a small pen, being by mechanical necessity about as long as its thicker, heavier sibling. But it also by far is the tool best fit to my hand of all the ones I've ever tried, and that's what counts, right?

(One final note worth making: the Decimo and Vanishing Point bodies are designed around the same nib unit, which I believe originated with the initial "Capless" models in the sixties. If you order a Decimo with the next nib size up from what you have in your Vanishing Point, then, the nibs and bodies will be fully cross-compatible!)

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably doing the lefty-handed-curl. If you adopt a really weird writing position you can write without smudges. Depending on your body-type it's either easy and obvious or very uncomfortable. I'm in the latter group so I just use a pencil.

Euch. That lefty-handed-curl is a solution proposed by the right handed world. The correct way to write as a left handed person is to turn the page ninety degrees.

Or play it like DaVinci and write mirrored, right-to-left.

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#166
post #122
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a Uniball One-F (the premium body) and put Jetstream refills in there as a drop-in replacement. Note though that for longevity in engineering notebooks I don’t like to use Jetstreams because of the yellowing seepage problem over time. But for everyday throwaway writing this setup is the ideal best of both worlds.

What's the timeline for this? My undergrad notes from ~15 years ago have held up without obvious degradation. Those are mostly Jetstream inks on generic paper (some Oxford notebook). I swapped to fountain pens at some point when I discovered Noodler's. Bernanke Blue dries extremely fast. Though my TWSBIs from the time haven't held up well. They were fine when constantly used but they cracked in storage.

It somewhat depends on the humidity and temperature. I have not tested for controls, but I suspect it has to do with the low-viscosity oil component undergoing some process similar to paper chromatography where upon contact with moisture it separates from the pigment seeps to the back of the page.

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first full time software engineering paycheque went towards a Lamy 2000. I've been using it for many years now and it's never let me down.

That probably costs more than I ever spent on all writing utensils I've ever owned. What makes this cost that much (other than they are owned by uniball)? The material certainly isn't worth that much? And the function would be replicated in the market for less? So, what makes it not some luxury bullshit?

Ever buy yourself something nice that you use often? A nice belt, a nice comb, or a nice razor? A nice kitchen knife arguably does the same job as a cheap Walmart special.

Sometimes it's nice to splurge on high quality items - especially when you use them every day, like a pen. It's a little thing, but it brings pleasure every time you use it.

Not everything is about cost efficiency. You'll never regret buying quality.

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#168
post #12

That's a very nice pen and I get the appeal. However, I've recently discovered Uni Jetstream pens, and I don't see ever buying anything else. There are nicer pen bodies out there but I've never used a pen that does a better job of putting ink on paper, reliably, every time, without ever skipping in the slightest, not requiring any significant pressure, working on every kind of paper, and drying instantly. For me, it…

have you tried pentel EnerGel?

+1 to EnerGel and the RSVP which are my two daily drivers.

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#169
I haven't bought a Rotring in decades (and the Rotring rapidographs I do have still hold up), and wouldn't at this stage given the decline in build quality since their buy-up from Newell (although I hear their APAC product is subcontracted to Holbein, which still has a great rep).

Re: Rotring 600 Ballpoint Pen

#170
post #121

There's no mention of this in the article, so be aware there's multiple posts online about QC issues. Rotring quality has been going down over the years, or their name outgrew the actual quality of the product. Current generation of 600s especially suffer from: cracking of the body (0, 1); but most importantly for pens, the joint part that screws into the bottom and upper part of the pen is extremely susceptible to w…

> Rotring quality has been going down over the years, or their name outgrew the actual quality of the product.

This story is so common that I wish there was an established economic term for it. Something like "reputational arbitrage" or perhaps "sentiment stickiness".

The basic idea is that a business can change its quality much faster than its reputation changes. If the business rapidly cuts costs and quality, their sales will reflect their reputed quality more than their actual quality for some amount of time. That gives them a window of very high profits where they can basically sell shit like it's gold.

Eventually the reputation catches up with them, but it seems to take a very long time to do so, if ever, so it's an extremely tempting business model.

There is a related but different effect where a brand establishes some level of cachet or meaningful emotional attachment back when the product was good. The product tanks, but people keep buying it even while knowing it's garbage just because of the emotional associations they have with the historical product.

The line between these two effects can be blurry. I think Pyrex leans more towards the former where people keep buying it simply because they don't realize it kind of sucks. But Jeep is the latter where it seems like everyone knows they'll spend half the time in the shop but people just like Jeeps anyway.

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