Clut and Clutter

That looks pretty good. You might want to add wood as a material (with its weakness of staining) and mention urushi. And under ergonomic considerations, the size of section (slender pens vs chunky pens), and shape of section, and 'disturbances' such as the Lamy 2000 'ears' and Pilot Capless clip getting in the way might be worth mentioning.

Also possibly a general section on things you can do yourself with a bit of care, with a bit of practice, and things that are strictly "don't try this at home" and require sending to a repairer or to the manufacturer.

 

Your friend is lucky. I wish I'd had a guide like that when I started out in the mad world of fountain pens!

Thanks for your input! Yes, not putting wood in the list of body materials warranting a mention was an oversight. I love pens with wooden bodies, but my main concern, or chagrin, is that I have not come across a wooden-bodied pen with a wooden cap that seals well. Actually, there is one, but it isn't really wood per se: the Pilot Custom Kaede's maple body is resin impregnated. All other wooden pens I have can dry out while capped and undisturbed; that includes several Platinum #3776 models.

 

The primer is really only meant to help her make sense of some of the things she may come across or read online. If she wants to try a Pilot Capless (Vanishing Point and/or Décimo; I don't have a Fermo) for size, so to speak, or play with a pen of some particular description, she's welcome to borrow some pens from my 300-strong personal fleet. Nothing beats hands-on experience with the actual writing instrument; she just needs to know what interests her, what concerns her, and what to ask for.

 

As it was, she didn't know about iron-gall ink, or that TWSBI Blue-Black is iron-gall, or that the clear plastic wall of a demonstrator's pen body can get stained or stuck with some rather clingy particulate matter, and so now she isn't quite as thrilled with her first pen purchase (which I didn't know about, until she shared a photo the day she received it). So I do want to arm her with some considerations to keep in mind.

Hi Smug Dill,

 

Nice project.  If it were me, I'd cover stuff like:

- nib types available, i.e. styles, materials (SS vs gold), flex vs nails;

- filling systems (I love the "thingie" comment) and how once can use them in practice (e.g. fill cartridges with a syringe);

- pen body materials and their consequences (pen not balanced of too heavy and big for the hand);

- and, whilst you've made it clear that you do not like vintage pens, a discussion of these beyond "I don't use them" is worth mentioning, e.g. different materials no longer in use.  Which ones are available at reasonable cost.  Perils of ageing plastics.

 

I look forward to following this.

 

Dang. You are a great friend!

 

One comment as a relative newcomer would be within the cleaning section: issues/differences in cleaning vacuum filler, piston filler in addition to cartridge/converter. I just cleaned out my Pilot 823 and while it wasn't particularly difficult I was a little paranoid about the drops of water that I could not get out. Perhaps this is something you are already including.

 

Anyway, great project and very thoughtful of you. I know it's a project for a friend, but I would love to learn from your experiences and positions. I don't care for politics of the various types; I like to try to read as many positions as possible and then make my own decision, for the good or ill. Ha!

@Texas42 Thank you. I myself have recently had the experience of cleaning out a Wing Sung 699, in which the iron-gall ink has been sitting for six months. No damage to the metal piston rod (whereas, in a Wing Sung 3013 vacuum-filler, it would have been corroded, turned green, and contaminated the ink in mere weeks), but there was a ring of colour at the far end of the barrel that wouldn't budge, and I found it impossible to unscrew the filling mechanism to clean the interior wall of the ink reservoir. I'm not sure whether that is the case in the Pilot Custom 823, but thank heavens the nib unit on the Wing Sung 699 screws out, so after soaking that ring of stubborn stain with a commercial pen cleaning solution, putting that part through an ultrasonic cleaning cycle, then gave the pen a huge amount of physical shaking, most of it came off, and the last little bit of sludge was mopped up with a narrow strip of filter paper (stiff enough to slip through the gap between piston plug rim and reservoir wall, to make it all the way to the end of the barrel, and then slid around the inner perimeter).

 

Given this friend of ours was a ‘clean freak’ (but I think she's much more relaxed these days), I probably wouldn't recommend to her any demonstrator pens. I think she's learnt a lesson about that with the TWSBI demonstrator she bought anyway; her telling me about the unwelcome surprise of how difficult it is to clean the pen everywhere that she could see, and her questions about the tools and lubricant that came in the pen's retail package, were what prompted me to think she needs a primer of sorts to clue her in on so many bits and pieces of information seasoned hobbyists take for granted.

 

I'm new to fountain pens, too. I had a Sheaffer fountain pen back in fifth grade. Its tendency to leak and imperatives of laundry day forced a transition to Bic pens. The fascination with fountain pens I had back in fifth grade returned a few months ago and I've had a revelation.

 

Sailboats and pens have a common philosophical touchpoint.

 

If a task is hard or makes the sailor look clumsy, that's the boat's way of saying there's a better way.

 

Fountain pens have nuances in the way they work. A bad habit may just be a signal there's a better way.

 

For instance, almost every review of Opus 88 pens shows an agonizing half hour of begging the fates to get the pen to start writing when filled with a dry feed. I finally bought an Omar to see if the pen was getting a fair representation.

 

Dry nib, dry feed, mine starts instantly after a refill, no problem - but there's a trick.

 

A pen that loads ink through the feed is primed as a side effect of filling it. It's common to prime a cartridge pen by squeezing the cartridge. For some reason, reviewers don't notice there's something similar to be done with Opus 88's. Fill the pen with an eyedropper, then hold it nib-down over an ink bottle. Retract the plunger a quarter inch and push it forward. Repeat, maybe once more, to get a drop of ink to come out of the feed. The plunger doesn't seal against the interior of the reservoir but it will create enough turbulence to move a little ink.

 

Wipe the nib with a paper towel and wick excess ink off the feed. It's ready to write as soon as it touches paper.

 

One of my first pens was a TWSBI Vac 700R. Lovely pen except it ran dry after a page or so. Once again, then cure was pretty easy.

 

The valve at the bottom of the plunger in vacuum pens is a one-way valve. That's so if the pen is nearly full you can still retract the plunger against a column of ink. As the plunger is pulled out, ink will flow through the plunger valve, moving from behind the plunger to in front of it. When you press the plunger in, the one-way valve closes. It forces ink in front of the plunger out the feed and pulls a vacuum behind it.

 

All cool but I created a problem that caused the pen to run dry.

 

The valve is open to ink flow if it's in the process of being pulled out. It's closed to ink flow if it's in the process of being pushed in.

 

If I unthread the plunger cap two turns, the valve is being pulled out. A gap will remain between the metal plunger and the stopper and ink can flow.

 

If I unthread the plunger cap three turns and then turn it one turn back in, the valve is now in the process of being pushed in. The gap is gone, the valve is closed, and the pen will run dry.

 

Either way, the plunger cap is two turns out. If it's two turns out but on the way back in, the pen will starve for ink.

 

Once I discovered that, no more trouble.

 

I'm also proud to say that I've never had so much as the tiniest drop of ink stain on my fingers. The cheap disposable latex gloves I bought haven't been so lucky, but I'm ink stain free. 🙂

 

Apologies for a long post from a newbie. Fountain pens capture my imagination.

 

12 minutes ago, Amontillado said:

I neglected to mention the Opus 88 line are all eyedropper pens.

 

That's not entirely true. My Opus 88 Shell pen is cartridge/converter-filled. There was a Opus 88 Heart Sutra limited edition fountain pen that is also c/c-filled. (In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have taken that out of my shopping basket, when I had the chance to buy it.)

 

14 minutes ago, Amontillado said:

I never had any luck with just waiting for the Opus 88 to get primed from pointing downhill.

 

Giving the nib and feed an enema of just water, then shaking off excess water and soak up a bit more by standing it nib point down on a paper towel, before screwing the gripping section back onto the freshly filled barrel on an Opus 88 eyedropper-filled model, can help the ink flow start more readily.

 

Thanks - I’ll try that next time I empty the tank, which will probably be in about a week.

 

Learn something new, always a good day.

Hi Smug, what a wonderful gift! Just saw this and unsurprisingly, it looks quite thorough.  I think it would be helpful to include:

 

ink storage - all those little vials!

most suitable uses for the different nibs relative to purpose and/or personal writing style

including assessment of portability (e.g. I love the Taccia 8-pen kimono wraps as they protect, are easily portable, and are beautiful.  A wooden display box is not portable.)

 

Helpful websites - like FPN

maybe the following (once she's comfortable)

-How to tell if a pen is wet or dry. How to remedy with out doing things to the pen (using dry or wet inks).

-how to clean a pen safely

-vintage versus modern and pros/cons  (celluloid is flammble)

-the joy of an inexpensive pen with a broad or stub nib: shimmering inks, sheening inks, no fear of ruining something super collectable/rare/vintage

-a bit about paper and how inks can look different on different surfaces (e.g. sheen on Tomoe River etc). Heck for that matter how inks look different depending on nibs. I have a vintage waterman that is flexy. almost every ink I put in it lays down about 3-4 shades darker.

 

 

 

I know that this is a bit of a zombie post, but I would recommend adding something about how different cleaning materials might react with different pen materials (ammonia, isopropol alcohol, etc).

It would be unfortunate to see a beautiful pen damaged or dissolved by cleaning with the wrong supplies (especially since you mentioned that your friend was a "clean-freak".

 

 

I got my first real fountain pen on my 60th birthday and many hundreds of pens later I’ve often thought of what I should’ve known in the beginning. I have many pens, the majority of which have some objectionable feature. If they are too delicate, or can’t be posted, or they are too precious to face losing , still they are users, but only in very limited environments..  I have a big disliking for pens that have the cap jump into the air and fly off. I object to Pens that dry out, or leave blobs of ink on the paper, or leak, or don’t fit in my hand well, or many other things that I would probably have to ponder about before I could list them.

 

So my advice is to find out what one objects to.  My chess game and my pen collecting both benefited by my learning the strategy of avoiding making bad moves. Eliminating bad moves makes it more probable that one will find the good one.

5 minutes ago, adamselene said:

So my advice is to find out what one objects to.

 

Alas, one cannot know “good” without some idea of “bad” against which to contrast; and, as one of my former bosses (back when I was in my twenties) used to say, “on the scale of good to bad…”, it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. Whereas subjectively acceptable (or tolerable) and unacceptable may well be a dichotomy to someone, and finding whether the threshold or cusp between them lies takes experiencing many degrees of less-than-ideal, especially if the decision is somehow influenced by factors other than performance, e.g. effective price (including but not limited to “discount” from the retail price in one's local market), as well as understanding the scope of one's use cases.

1 minute ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Alas, one cannot know “good” without some idea of “bad” against which to contrast; and, as one of my former bosses (back when I was in my twenties) used to say, “on the scale of good to bad…”, it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. Whereas subjectively acceptable (or tolerable) and unacceptable may well be a dichotomy to someone, and finding whether the threshold or cusp between them lies takes experiencing many degrees of less-than-ideal, especially if the decision is somehow influenced by factors other than performance, e.g. effective price (including but not limited to “discount” from the retail price in one's local market), as well as understanding the scope of one's use cases.

 

Agreed.  And I think it’s good to be aware of this early on and think about at the point of buying rather than rationalizing a purchase..

5 minutes ago, adamselene said:

I think it’s good to be aware of this early on

 

It is the reason why I'm so keen on the idea of a personal library — of pens, nibs, inks, paper products, etc. — and spent so much money, as well as time and effort, to “build” it for myself (because I can't simply remember everything, especially as I'm getting older fast) and my wife, so that we can “know”; and, instead of just disposing of what displeased us, or even just not good enough to be “given the time of day” against competition from >500 other pens and >500 other inks for our attention, I keep those things around for reference, and would of course make them (along with their “betters”) available for our friends to try out if they're so inclined.

 

Even so, that is the sort of thing I unapologetically do not believe for one moment ought to be available and/or accessible as a community resource, especially to those who are disinclined to “pay for (intangible) intelligence” of which material possessions would be unacceptable, intolerable, or “waste of money” to acquire for themselves at their own expense.