41–50 of 233 posts
As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.
I'm genuinely curious why many lefties have trouble with fountain pens, not trolling.
When I first got into fountain pens, Noodlers was a pretty heavily recommended ink. I wish I had seen this article ten years ago.
A good resource for fountain pen lovers is https://www.nibs.com/
They do repair and custom work too.
I think I'll stick with my beloved Bic Cristals, this looks like an incredible amount of trouble.
Love writing with cheap bic disposable fountain pens... any suggestions for a low-maintenance first ballpoint? Preferably relatively inexpensive
If you're not a caligrapher, why bother? Just buy gel pens and get the comfort with way less maintenance.
When I was a student I always took notes with a fountain pen, and I was the only one in the class who could log pretty much everything that was said, and with relatively good handwriting for the speed. A lot of people photocopied my notes!
Maintenance depends on the pen. Some require frequent cleaning, but for example, I have a Platinum Century #3776 that can sit unused for a month and will still write perfectly with no fuss (it has a sealing mechanism that prevents the ink from drying). I use it with Platinum's blue-black ink, which is one of the mythical iron gall inks, but since the nib is gold and the pen is designed so that no other metal parts are in contact with the ink, it's not going to eat my pen any time soon. I think you could give that pen+cartridges combination to anyone and it will probably run for years without maintenance (although I do clean it every few months just in case).
I think I'll stick with my beloved Bic Cristals, this looks like an incredible amount of trouble.
Fountain pens are one of those things that probably would have died out if not for the internet, especially on the cheaper end of the market. There are today more pens and inks to choose from than at any time in history, even times when fountain pens were widely used.