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Let the Fountain Pens Flow

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Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#81

Post by komali2 »

dorchadas wrote: post #42
drgoodvibe wrote: post #23

I'm in my mid 30's and have been collecting fountain pens for a few years now. Not a a lot of vintage but I have a few rare limited editions and high end stuff not because of status or collectibility but because I love the materials and look and feel. To be honest, it's the tactility of it. Being all digital all the time makes me miss the closeness to the words when I'm actually writing with a pen and paper. And when…

I'm about 10 years younger than you, and have always been interested in fountain pens, even before I started becoming more cynical about technology. Any advice on how to start collecting them? Or even just finding good ones to use?

Your best bet is probably the subreddit. It's extraordinarily active.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#82

Post by komali2 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #64
jdietrich wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the many, many lies I was told at primary school: "You need to learn to use a fountain pen, because you have to use one at secondary school". Nobody used a fountain pen at secondary school.

Similar to the lie I heard about computers from one particular teacher in high school: "You can't use a mouse, because nobody uses a mouse in the real world!" This was in 1994 and it hadn't been true for quite some time! (In her defense, WordPerfect 5.1 was a heck of a lot more productive with keyboard shortcuts, especially if you had the little "cheat sheet" to place atop the function key row on your keyboard, and o…

Someone told my friend that they would be forced to use VIM at work as an IT requirement, at university in 2015.

Even if he was only using remote terminals I can't see how this is a sane thing to say to a class of students.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#83

Post by Youden »

blhack wrote: post #25
joshu wrote: post #2

Not quite the same, but I've been getting into technical pens because normal pens don't work as well in my plotter. I've found a lot of different failure modes in all sorts of writing implements so far... Example output: https://twitter.com/joshu/status/1074836822751010816

Ohhhh! What pen is that? I'm actually a big fan of using sharpies in plotters (made some drawings like this: http://blog.blhack.me/show?p=colorBook ) The problem is that they run out of ink very quickly. I've been looking for a more "pro" version of them, and it seems like your pens might be a good place to start!

If you're looking for a more "pro" version of sharpies, the marker most used by artists seems to be Copic. They're refillable, last quite a while and you can change their nibs.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#84

Post by tapanjk »

jypepin wrote: post #55

I grew up in France, where schools don't allow you to use anything else but fountain pens. They don't teach you how to use one - to me, it's always been the same thing as using a ball pen, except you trade the convenience (you have to change the ink cartridge) for practicality (you can erase the ink with special eraser) while keeping some style (it's still ink, not pencil, kept for drawing). Getting a new pen felt we…

I too went to school at a time when fountain pens were the only permissible writing instrument. Now I use a fountain pen mostly to write my daily journal, and have pampered myself by buying a nice (at least relatively) fountain pen and a couple of bottles of good ink. I love writing with this pen and ink combination. When I hear about fountain pens as a hobby and how the hobbyists like to collect pens and inks, somehow I cannot relate to this at all. For me, now that I have found a fountain pen that I like, my focus is set entirely on the writing and never do I feel the urge to go get another fountain pen. I will think about another fountain pen only if the current one is lost or broken.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#85

Post by jdietrich »

komali2 wrote: post #82
JohnBooty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to the lie I heard about computers from one particular teacher in high school: "You can't use a mouse, because nobody uses a mouse in the real world!" This was in 1994 and it hadn't been true for quite some time! (In her defense, WordPerfect 5.1 was a heck of a lot more productive with keyboard shortcuts, especially if you had the little "cheat sheet" to place atop the function key row on your keyboard, and o…

Someone told my friend that they would be forced to use VIM at work as an IT requirement, at university in 2015. Even if he was only using remote terminals I can't see how this is a sane thing to say to a class of students.

He's infinitely more likely to be forced to use some kind of Eclipse-based monstrosity.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#86

Post by ricardobeat »

rwmj wrote: post #73
sandGorgon wrote: post #46

If you are like me - and yearn for the feel of ink, yet the convenience of a ballpoint..then do try using a rollerball. The hack here is to use some very specific refills and use it inside your cool Rollerball. For example I use a Signo 307 refill (which is smear, water and tamper proof and specially designed for anti-document signing fraud) inside my special edition Waterman. The other super cool Rollerball refill i…

I have a TWSBI and several Lamys, which are great, but the pen I buy and use in bulk is the Uniball UM-153S rollerball. All the fun of a fountain pen without the hassle of dealing with ink. It's the pen for notes and shopping lists. From my Amazon orders, I seem to buy a 12 box of them at least once a year. To Mitsubishi Pencil Co (makers of the Uniball): please make a green ink version!

I just saw them in green yesterday (and a host of metallic inks) in a Coop supermarket, also available online: https://www.amazon.de/Uni-Ball-UB-157-Tintenroller-Spitze-St...

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#87

Post by yiyus »

jgtrosh wrote: post #77
JohnBooty wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting that. I'd no idea fountain pens were the standard in some countries.

I had the opposite discovery when I went to work in Spain and colleagues ogled my basic Parker pen like I was a prince or something. It's not a panacea in France though, since people usually buy their kids cheap ones which leave a lasting bad impression. Many people get very defensive about handwriting and that is partly accountable to the terrible fountain pens they had to learn with.

Fountain pens were very common in Spain too not so long ago. I went to school in the 80s and many children had fountain pens. Erasable pens mostly finished with them, and nowadays children learn writing in a very different way (they start writing in caps, and only later they learn cursive).

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#88

Post by yesenadam »

When I was learning to draw years ago, I read in a book comparing every kind of pen, that steel nib + ink is incomparably the best for drawing. (Not a fountain pen, just a steel nib stuck into a wood or plastic holder) And indeed it is! Vary the stroke width as you go from super-thin to thick, (or change ink colour to whatever you like at any moment), or change between bendy and stiff nibs, there's nothing like it. Also they're cheap and last for many years.

When I was in high school in the 80s I never used a ball-point, but only Artline, with their weird fibrous tip that didn't last long. Then when Uniballs came along I used nothing else for many years, black and blue. Now I find most ball-points are fine for writing, they mostly have a rollerball feel compared to the ones a few decades ago. But for drawing, steel nibs.

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#89

Post by HSO »

Plus ça change…

In this coldly pixelated age, old-fashioned writing implements make a small but meaningful comeback

I used to be sympathetic but am getting quite tired of this trope. Without having researched it, could it be that this started a few years after the introduction of the iPhone?

[1] H. Wallop. The return of the filofax. The Telegraph, Feb 25 2010.

[2] P. Paul. A paper calendar? it’s 2011. New York Times, Jul 29 2011.

[3] L. Kellaway. Digital diaries are no match for our paper past. Financial Times, Aug 31 2014.

[4] A. Chemin. Handwriting vs typing: Is the pen still mightier than the keyboard? The Guardian, Dec 16 2014.

[5] C. Martin. Moleskine notebooks adapt to the digital world. New York Times, Apr 18 2015.

[6] The Economist. Schumpeter: On the cards. Mar 14 2015.

[7] N. Sovich. The handwritten to-do list makes a comeback. Wall Street Journal, Sep 08 2016.

[8] A. Birrane. Why paper is the real ’killer app’. BBC News, Jan 23 2017.

[9] K. Wong. The case for using a paper planner. New York Times, Jan 4 2018.

[10] ∞

I guess one factor is that the industry is fighting a rearguard battle and paying PR agencies to place this sort of article in popular media[+]. Admittedly, they got me: Before the introduction of the Pencil, I did indeed fall for it and buy a few high-priced "good" pens by the likes of Montblanc and Faber-Castell plus overpriced stationery.

But I'll be damned if it wasn't all this fucking nostalgia that got us into the current mess, even though there are so many good things happening. And it is nostalgia that is holding us back or slowing our speed forward, to a better world than the old, retrograde shit.

So yea, I tossed the pens, effectively. No use for paper anymore. Attachment to old shit, for oldness's sake, has become toxic in my mind in the last few years.

___________________________

[+] Something similar seems to be happening too in watches, after the popularization of smartwatches after 2015. I see a LOT, really a lot, of ads for watches in magazines and newspapers (which I consume mostly in PDF version of the print magazine, so no microtargeting going on there).

Re: Let the Fountain Pens Flow

#90

Post by rwmj »

ricardobeat wrote: post #86
rwmj wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a TWSBI and several Lamys, which are great, but the pen I buy and use in bulk is the Uniball UM-153S rollerball. All the fun of a fountain pen without the hassle of dealing with ink. It's the pen for notes and shopping lists. From my Amazon orders, I seem to buy a 12 box of them at least once a year. To Mitsubishi Pencil Co (makers of the Uniball): please make a green ink version!

I just saw them in green yesterday (and a host of metallic inks) in a Coop supermarket, also available online: https://www.amazon.de/Uni-Ball-UB-157-Tintenroller-Spitze-St...

Yes I have this set too :-) However it's slightly different from the UM-153S, in particular the nibs are narrower and not quite so nice to write with. (I will admit I'm now being very picky indeed - all of these pens are far superior to biros).
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