as a lefty I’ve found what qualifies a good pen is how quickly the ink dries to prevent smudging
Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
131–140 of 157 posts
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#132For a few years now my favorite pen has been the Sharpie Felt Tip Pen. Not like their typical "aromatic" markers or even the fine-point version, these are slimmer black-barrel black ink pens that can be found in 2 or 4 packs in the grocery store and other common places. They also come in a range of other colors. The caps come off and go back on more easily than the fine-point markers, and the ink doesn't bleed through thin paper. I usually write on brown 4x6 index cards, folded in half and clipped to my 3x4 cedar shingle pocket clipboard.
This page doesn't mention Sharpie at all, and they don't list these pens under their brand search feature. Here's an Amazon link if anybody is interested:
https://www.amazon.com/Sharpie-Fine-Point-Black-1742661/dp/B...
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#133Have to agree with the Vanishing Point being the best luxury fountain pen for writing... I have like 8 of them.
The Moonman A2 is my current favorite pen. Though it's a knock-off, the out-of-box nib smoothness was better than that of the Vanishing Point that I ended up returning.
The fact that it's only $15 on AliExpress makes it a steal. No pun intended.
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#134I really wanted to get into fountain pens a while ago. I bought several different ones over the years and ultimately had roughly the same experience. In the end I didn't find them great for me, being a lefty in a right-to-left writing world. The main benefits of the fountain pen feel is when you're able to just lightly drag the pen across the paper, its nearly effortless to put down a good line. However, being a left…
The article linked here has a section with the best pens for lefties. You should be grateful that you have not been born a century earlier. When my father, who was also left-handed, was in elementary school (almost 90 years ago), it was still a practice to persuade the left-handed to write using their right hand by beatings.
The article linked does have pen recommendations for lefties, but it doesn't have recommendations for the best fountain pens for lefties.
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point, but I'll note that I actually use these for court stipulations (i.e. very important writing). My use case is for documents where the document will be photocopied after signed by all parties and the photocopy becomes the filed document so this alleviates the concern. >Also, IIRC, extreme cold can bring the ink back, so I also wouldn't trust these to hide sensitive information. Oh fun - I put an erased pape…
Fair enough. I'll add the bit that they're fine if you don't need the ink to be anything more than short term. Excited to hear how the experiment goes!
Yep - the freezer brought the ink back! Very impressive and interesting.
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#136What a great site! I realize that it is a store, but content like this is valuable: https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Pilot-FriXion-Erasable-Pens-A-C... I recently found these erasable pens and they are incredible tech. The friction of rubbing the rubber eraser on the ink heats up the ink and causes the ink to turn invisible. It leaves no ink residue on the eraser.
these are a big deal in Japan - I found out about it through work and now I have my kids use them for homework instead of pencils or typical crappy american style erasable pens but of course it confuses the teachers at the school and they insist my kids use pencils at school...
Yes - although these are easily available in the states, I found out about them while on vacation in Japan. I asked chatGPT what items were most sought after by visitors to Japan and pens were on that list.
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree that those are potential cons, but it also highlights how much versatility you can have with a fountain pen. For instance, there are ones that travel very well with shutoff valves to prevent ink leakage. There are options for filling that can all but eliminate getting ink on your hands. Nibs can be tuned and ink choices can align with what paper you write on, so you don't absolutely have to change th…
Wow! I've never heard of a pen with a shutoff valve. Could you please share some recommendations?
The filling mechanism of the pen is what tends to dictate whether there is a shutoff valve, and there two mechanisms that have this feature; vacuum fillers, and Japanese eyedroppers.
Vacuum fillers are generally higher end pens, but the best, cheapest option is a PenBBS 456, which is a Chinese pen. The Pilot 823 is very well loved pen in the community, and a good "next level" pen if you're looking for one. Viscontis are high end luxury pens that feature a vacuum filling mechanism, although their marketing calls it a power filler.
Japanese eyedroppers aren't really a "filling mechanism", per say, but can be thought of in that manner, even though you have to fill them with a syringe or pipette. Unfortunately far fewer pens make use of this, and tend to be very high end pens. The one exception are pens from Opus88, which pretty much all feature this mechanism, and are very reasonably priced. Then there's a big gap until you get to the high end urushi pens like the Pilot Emperor.
There's other one offs, like the bulkfilling mechanism from Conid and used on the PenBBS 355. The Diplomat Nexus uses an integrated shutoff valve that's engaged when capping the pen.
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#138I’m not a pen guy. I mainly use pencils. The kuratoga is the best mechanism and the twist-erase is the best eraser. I hacked together some prototypes of the two together using a pipe cutter and a 3d printer. https://ruby.social/@Schneems/111115448981873661
I used to be a pencil guy. Then I got older, and found that low contrast between the pencil lead and the paper made it harder for me to read. Been using black ink every since, both the Uni Jetstream 0.38 and the Hi-Tec C Coleto 0.3.
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#139Nice article, and love a good pen. But I often struggle to find notebooks with consistently nice paper for fountain pens and fine nibs. Anyone got any recommendations?
Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens
#140I always feel that fountain pens should come with bigger caveats than they're typically presented with. I absolutely love them (more than you'd even guess), but if someone is just going to "pick up" a fountain pen and just start writing they might be in for a bit of shift. Writing with a fountain pen isn't really the same as writing with a ball point, and there will be some adjustment that goes along with it. If you'…
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