As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.
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Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
11–20 of 233 posts
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#12As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.
I am a lefty too, and actually had to change my writing style - well, my pen holding style, in primary school to adapt.
If you hold the pen in a very curled grip where your palm is right next to the nib, then I can see you may have a problem, but I've found that nowadays, most modern inks dry quick enough and don't smear as easily as the inks I used in school 30-40 years ago.
Also, I learned to write slower with a fountain pen, which is probably better for my mental processing. It also means I make less mistakes by focusing on my writing word by word rather than thinking 2 or 3 words ahead while writing.
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#13I love fountain pens! I've been using them all my life and try to have my kids use them too (with some success so far). But, so called "rocking" (or rocker) blotters are increasingly hard to find, so much so that I decided to design and produce my own. (It's a beautiful sheet of metal with a bent plastic part to hold the blotting paper). But I wonder if there really is a market for it? Do people still use fountain pe…
This isn't true for all fountain inks, but the ones that I use dry quickly enough that blotting just isn't necessary.
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#14As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.
Get a Lamy Vista "left hander", it's a great, and cheap starter pen. If you get into it, upgrade to a TWSBI, which is a little more expensive but a really lovely fountain pen.
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#15Hmm, I love using fountain pens, and have been using Iroshizuku inks for years. However, none of my pens have a bladder well (mostly screw plungers) so I think I am safe ?!?
Most Iroshizukus tend to have high pH [1]. It might be problematic on e.g. celluloid pens depending on the particular ink color you use. It's a shame as they are superb inks. I tend to use J Herbin Lie de Thé which is close to neutral and its formula is very safe (basically water plus food-grade colorants). [1] http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/ink_ph.htm
Thanks for the heads up on J Herbin Lie de Thé - They seem around the same price point as the Iroshizukus, so I will see if the place I usually order from stock these and try them out.
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#16I use fountain pens when I can because I like the feel of writing with them and, to a limited extent the, I enjoy the ritual of caring for the instruments. It has long bothered me that I cannot simply buy pen ink without the background information presented in this article. Because of the issue of inks damaging my pens, I've become increasingly unwilling to experiment with new brands of ink or trying sensational colo…
> I now limit myself strictly to inks sold by pen manufacturers (specifically, Pelikan, Waterman, and Parker), which don't pose the problems discussed in this article.
On the plus side, there are enough nice inks sold by the pen manufacturers themselves that this isn't particularly restrictive.
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#17Man I forgot how annoying frames pages are when you try to zoom them for readability.
Double annoying when the pages inside the frames have redirects when you try to load them outside the frames. :(
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#18I like fountain pens a lot, but most of the times I actually need to write, I need to do so away from a desktop and fountain pens aren't ideal for these conditions (for those occasions I have the zebra 701+space pen hacked pen [e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S4bjPG5Lr4]).
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#19I think I'll stick with my beloved Bic Cristals, this looks like an incredible amount of trouble.
Re: Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)
#20I love fountain pens! I've been using them all my life and try to have my kids use them too (with some success so far). But, so called "rocking" (or rocker) blotters are increasingly hard to find, so much so that I decided to design and produce my own. (It's a beautiful sheet of metal with a bent plastic part to hold the blotting paper). But I wonder if there really is a market for it? Do people still use fountain pe…
This isn't true for all fountain inks, but the ones that I use dry quickly enough that blotting just isn't necessary.
It not only depends on the ink but on the paper, and the usage. When writing long documents there's no problem, but when signing contracts (or initialing them) a blotter is very necessary because there's no time for the ink to dry before another paper comes on top of it.
Also, it's a cool object ;-)