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Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

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Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#51

Post by bambax »

fatbird wrote: post #32
bambax wrote: post #22

I'm surprised there's a market for budget foutain pens. We mostly don't write by hand anymore and if we do, it's to jolt down notes. One chooses to use a fountain pen for the thrill of it, or for love of tradition. In those cases, money is no object. A budget fountain pen is like a budget race car. Obviously I'm wrong, but I'm not sure why.

Budget fountain pens fill a niche of “spend a little more for something nice, but not so much I’ll worry about losing or wrecking it.” Fountain pens that work well without fuss, like Lamy Safari, or Pilot Metropolitan, really are nicer to use than ballpoint or gel pens, and the slight extra effort to using ink in cartridges or from a bottle adds familiarity and comfort to it. It’s not a pen, it’s your pen, and the lo…

I use fountain pens and take notes at work with fountain pens. But not budget ones -- not luxury ones either, but in the range of €100-150. Part of the pleasure is the nib, sure, but also the body and the metal cap and the weight. I doubt I would derive the same enjoyment from a Lamy Safari but I must admit I never tried it.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#53

Post by schneems »

I’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

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#54

Post by kstrauser »

fatbird wrote: post #40
lagniappe wrote: post #10

Lamy Safari with noodler's or get the hell out of my office.

My friend, you owe it to yourself to try Platinum Carbon Black ink. More permanent and waterproof than Noodlers, and a black so dark and dense you'll think you can see the end of the void in it. Ignore the haters who claim pigmented ink wrecks your pens--both my wife and I have drawn miles of lines with it, and even leaving it sitting on the desk unused for weeks, we never have a problem with it.

Also, in fountain pen terms, Safaris are so reasonably priced that you can dedicate one to a specific ink. I mention using Baystate Blue. I might not put that in the same pen where I'd later use, say, yellow ink, but I don't have to.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#55

Post by quercusa »

anononaut wrote: post #42

I use a multipen, a pen with multiple ink cartridges that can switch on the fly. Just like the one you had as a kid! I use four colors plus black for my day-to-day engineering journal. I use the colors for semantic highlighting. By default, I write in black. People, teams, and customers are in blue. I also annotate some things with blue arrows and words. Dates and very important notes are in red. Projects and tickets…

I remember getting a Bic 4-color pen as a kid - it was very exciting.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#56

Post by charcircuit »

vel0city wrote: post #44

I 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…

If you think it's painful, why not write with your right hand instead? Just because you are a lefty that doesn't mean you have to artificially limit yourself into doing things a painful way.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#57

Post by fatbird »

bambax wrote: post #51
fatbird wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Budget fountain pens fill a niche of “spend a little more for something nice, but not so much I’ll worry about losing or wrecking it.” Fountain pens that work well without fuss, like Lamy Safari, or Pilot Metropolitan, really are nicer to use than ballpoint or gel pens, and the slight extra effort to using ink in cartridges or from a bottle adds familiarity and comfort to it. It’s not a pen, it’s your pen, and the lo…

I use fountain pens and take notes at work with fountain pens. But not budget ones -- not luxury ones either, but in the range of €100-150. Part of the pleasure is the nib, sure, but also the body and the metal cap and the weight. I doubt I would derive the same enjoyment from a Lamy Safari but I must admit I never tried it.

You wouldn't, the Safari is too light and plasticky feeling. But the Pilot Metropolitan has a metal body that gives it a comparable heft to more expensive pens, and writes beautifully.

You might look at TWSBI fountain pens. They're still cheaper than your normal range, but very good quality, and offer some of the more fun mechanisms, like the pump pistons that fill the body itself with ink--in a clear body, it looks cool.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#58

Post by quercusa »

pyrophane wrote: post #21

I ignored fountain pens for a long time because I'm not a calligrapher or artist and I mostly want writing to be easy and convenient. On a whim, I finally ordered a LAMY Safari and was really surprised at how much better the writing experience was. I noticed my penmanship improved and I was able to write more easily on parts of the page that I normally struggle with, such as near the binding in some notebooks. I attr…

Among the obituaries of a former Conservative Minister a few years ago, there was one delightful snippet. A line in The Daily Telegraph described how, when she received the letter from Mrs Thatcher appointing her to the Lords, Lady Blatch initially believed it to be a hoax, because the letter was signed in Biro and she had been ‘brought up to believe that nobody who matters uses a Biro’.

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/style/unparalleled-joy-...

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#59

Post by delecti »

EwanG wrote: post #47

Bought a Fisher Millennium Space Pen in 2000 which came with a lifetime guarantee for the Pen AND the Ink. Here it is 2024 and it still writes just fine. Have not had to get a refill yet (though not sure if they would honor it still). So I'd argue that might be the "Best Pen" for at least some of us :-)

They're really fantastic for people who don't write often (stick one in your bag and it'll definitely still work when you need it), but I don't love the writing experience. They take more force than many other pens, and put down a pretty thick line of ink. Which I suppose is to say that I agree with their recommendation of the Space Pen as an EDC pen.

Re: Best Pens for 2024: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens

#60

Post by notyourwork »

bambax wrote: post #22

I'm surprised there's a market for budget foutain pens. We mostly don't write by hand anymore and if we do, it's to jolt down notes. One chooses to use a fountain pen for the thrill of it, or for love of tradition. In those cases, money is no object. A budget fountain pen is like a budget race car. Obviously I'm wrong, but I'm not sure why.

Anecdotally, my 10 year old nephew asked for one for Christmas this year. When we asked why he wanted one, he replied “to write stuff.”

Not sure but I wonder if there is some hipster youth trend where writing is making a comeback?

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