Day 5: pens

[feuervogel]

I have a bunch of friends who are really into fountain pens. If you also have fountain-pen-loving friends, you know how enthusiastic they are about their hobby. Their frequently expensive hobby.

20+ years ago, when I was a junior in college studying in Germany, I picked up a Lamy Safari (yellow) because everybody in Germany uses fountain pens and I wanted to fit in. I never really got the hang of it, or never used it often enough - the ink always dried out. American notebook paper is too thin for fountain pen ink; it bleeds straight through.

In 2014, when I was doing a job observation thing in Mannheim, I picked up a Lamy AL-Star (the official color is purple, but it's a lovely deep burgundy) and a package of ink cartridges. All of this sat mostly unused for a while ... until my stupid, evil friends enabled me to get ink samples. And also because Goulet was doing BOGO on the Jinhao Shark for Shark Week. (They're $4 pens to begin with. I have 4 or 5. I like them for testing ink samples.)

So, anyway, I bought myself a Monteverde Rodeo Drive in October, and I like the heft of it, but the nib is very dry, and reviewers said that dipping it in water helped, so I'll fill that pen up and see if that works for me. When I bought it, Goulet was doing a free bottle of Monteverde ink with Monteverde pen purchase, so I got a bottle of Mandarin orange, and it's a really lovely autumn orange.

I also have a bottle of Colorverse Delicious Sleep (purple) and a small bottle of Colorverse Antimatter (greyish silver with a shimmer) that came as a freebie with the Delicious sleep. Then there's the Lamy Violet, Kaweco Summer Purple, and Monteverde Black in cartridges. I tested Diamine Syrah, Oxblood, and Sherwood Forest, and I liked the Syrah better as a red, and the green was beautifully perfect.

Serious Fountain Pen Nerds like to match their pens to the inks they put in them (the Syrah matches my AL-Star perfectly, but Lamy uses stupid proprietary cartridges and I don't wanna buy a bottle because I'm lazy, whine.) You don't have to; I assume even the biggest nerds don't do it all the time. But it's fun to try to find the perfect pen for the ink (or perfect ink for the pen, lol).

Honestly, Lamy is probably my favorite brand of pen. The Safari is a very basic resin pen, and the AL-Star is its slightly fancier aluminum brother. There are Very Expensive Lamy pens, too, of course - a friend of mine has a 2000 and says it's the best pen he's ever used, always flows perfectly - but a $25 Safari or $35 AL-Star will get you a lot of value for the money. You just have to either buy their stupid proprietary cartridges in limited colors or buy a converter or two and fill them from bottled ink. (Which honestly isn't that bad, I just like to complain, because it's harder to travel with a bottle than with a pack of cartridges.)

Lamy is a German brand, and, unsurprisingly, it's extremely popular over there. The Safari is babby's first fountain pen for middle school, and it seems like a lot of people stick with that one or go up a step. It's just a great workhorse pen! So if you want to try the fountain pen lifestyle, it's a great place to start.

I don't quite understand the point of $3000+ pens (they exist, seriously); they can't write 100 times better than my Lamy. At that point, it's like wine, I guess: the prestige/collector value. Yeah, that pen is very pretty, and I've heard good things about Pineider's quality, but, like. I just ... can't. (Then there's these, which are extremely pretty, and the least expensive is $200, which is about the highest price I can personally justify spending on a pen, but I get balky about $75. I've never spent more than $50 or so on a pen. I also can't swear that I'll never buy a fancy-ass pen if I miraculously become rich. This one, to be specific. Or this one.)

So, anyway, fountain pens. They're pretty fuckin cool.

Comments

[ruthling]

i have two friends who are pen geeks, and it does sound like a fun and potentially expensive as hell hobby. Enjoyed how you wrote about it, and that antimatter ink sounds great.

[feuervogel]

Thank you!

here is a tester of the antimatter ink. I never got it to look quite that nice, but I was using it in the pen that dries a lot, and with a fine nib. I want to get a flex nib for the shimmery inks - I'm told they work best in the wider nibs because you get more ink laid down.

[ruthling]

nice!

[johnstonmr]

Like you, I don't see the point of the stupidly expensive pens. They're pretty, but I don't need 'em. I do still want to get a Pilot Retractable, but it's not high on my list, and I probably never will.

The most expensive pen I own is the Platinum Century 3776; I bought it with my first book advance and will probably never buy another that expensive (just under $200).

In inks I have a Platinum pigmented blue archival ink, which is a lovely cobalt, and a Noodler's "British Empire Red," which looks like it came right off a British phone booth. I keep the Platinum in that pen, and the Noodler's I keep in my TWSBI Eco. During most years I use it for grading papers, but now it's just sitting on my desk.

[feuervogel]

I'm intrigued by the idea of a retractable fountain pen, but I don't know how I feel about the actuality of one. Convenient in many ways, and hopefully engineered not to be a leaky mess, but I'm sure I'd manage it somehow.

I was looking at some pens on Goulet recently, and the ones with a completely cylindrical barrel look uncomfortable to use. I have some weird finger dexterity issues, so I have extra considerations (as much as I love the Stabilo .88 pens, I've been having trouble holding them over the past year or so when the ink starts to run out and you have to hold them at a different angle). (Yeah, I should probably see someone about that.)

[twistedchick]

I started using fountain pens in college to take notes, because my handwriting is meh, and with the ink and an italic (music) pen it was far more readable. I have some older Parkers, but I mostly use the Lamys.

[feuervogel]

I've noticed that my handwriting is somewhat better in fountain pen, too! Maybe because I have to hold it at a particular angle and can't get away with the weird tricks I do with rollerballs, or maybe because I have to write more slowly and less cramped so the letters are actually readable. Or both!