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Recently got by post Indian "Camlin" Royal Blue ink 60ml. It came in a box, carefully packed. I liked the cap on a bottle - it opens easily and at the same time not a drop spilled during the transportation. The quality of ink is also nice. It's a bit more liquid than "Parker", but writes great on average quality paper (not too porous). This ink doesn't colorise the pen's grip section too fast (like for ex. USSR "Raduga") and doesn't dry if left for more than a couple of days inside the pen without writing, which are additional pluses. The smell of this ink is very light and quite pleasant. Would I buy it again? Yes, and I'd like to try other colors. Here are the pictures of the bottle and writing. At the moment this ink is one of my favourites.

Recently I got this Gold filled FP. Which is small but has solid build. when posted it can be on the heavier side. It is a smooth writer. Filling type is piston. It has a single camel logo on cap and in the nib. Nib has the markings 14CT and Germany. Cap has the marking: Staedtler 14CT Gold Filled Germany. Any info would be much appreciated. Thank you

From a compiled book of articles of 1901. Not sure why it's referred to as a fountain pen though.

A year of travel with my regular brown MTN (Midori Traveler’s Notebook) has gone by and I could not resist an urge to get another, this time perhaps a more portable one. Not the ultra portable (thumb drive kind) 10th Anniversary Notebook Mini (below), which stupendously completes itself within a span of 5 centimetres. This one had to be a passport, possibly with the recent branding of Traveler’s Company, Japan. If you would prefer a blogger view and enjoy pictures, do click on the below link: The Traveler’s Notebook Review You can find a review of the regular sized MTN here. Or should I say TN! Midori as many of you know is in fact is a 66-year old Japanese company specializing in paper products and creative design stationery. You may also bump into MD Paper, while searching for quality paper products across the Asian market. If you are not very familiar with the Traveler’s company brand, I can rest assure you that it is a rather recent development of 2016. The traveler’s notebooks which were marketed earlier under Midori brand of products, have been rebranded under Traveler’s Company, Japan. Additionally this Traveler’s Company is hosting a few other older product lines including spiral notebooks, kraft paper envelopes & the usual brass stationeries. The core part of the notebook i.e the paper is manufactured in Japan whereas the leather cover is finished by hand in the old city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Traveler’s Notebook comes in two different sizes – Passport & Regular. Though it used to come across two standard colour variants i.e black & brown, there is a third Camel colour available now, which was released as limited runs before. Also a few other limited colour runs (say: Blue) are released by Midori from time to time. DESIGN & PERFORMANCE (6/6) Multi-tier packaging. Not expensive, but Differentiated! A polyethylene plastic wrap, diaphanously enclosing a package wrapped in traditional brown paper, increases the excitement of unwrapping a gift. And you can also use the brown paper for a bit of nib smoothing! A note on the front of the package in traditional Japanese paper, reveals that the leather cover ages with time and use. Another at the back pictorially explains the four enclosures inside - Cotton Bag, Leather Cover, Blank Refill & Spare Rubber Band. It also makes a promise that the paper of the enclosed refill (notebook) is resistant to bleed-through (although there is some ghosting), but you can say that there is always a tomoe-river refill available, to simultaneously feel & enjoy ghosting to the maximum! On opening the brown envelope, you can find the notebook enclosed within a white cotton bag. You get two spare rubber bands (green & brown). You can also remove the brown one from the enclosure, to use it with the TN. Now the TN Passport is unveiled. You are right, it’s the Camel one . The leather enclosure is secured by a matching orange rubber band going through a perforation at the back, expresses both sense and simplicity in design. The cover is made of cowhide, ensconcing an elemental texture and I can say from experience that it acquires character over time. It’s supposed to scratch, change colour over time to transform into your signature dated companion. A note explains that the leather has been naturally dyed to retain the texture and wetness could result in coloration of immediate things touching it. To remove blemishes, you can use a normal leather cream (the white one), the one you might have used on your shoes/belts. The TN carries a single stitched notebook with blank pages (Refill#003). Two strings running across the notebook and the leather cover through multiple perforations are anchored by a small tin clasp, placed at the top-left end of the notebook system. The rubber band fastens the notebook and the rather loosely held non-elastic one is meant to be a bookmark. As stated in the other review, the economy of this notebook is primarily based on an Add-On model: base + spares, like the Gillette razor-blade model or a Sony PS. But again, Sony too sells its PlayStation at a loss and makes up for the same with the entire gaming economy. So, the ecosystem for the traveler notebook consists of two categories of refills – Notebooks and Accessories. Notebook refills primarily come in 64 pages (both sides) across lined (001), grid (002), blank (003) and lightweight Tomoe-River paper (005) variants. You can accessorize your traveler with pocket-sticker (022) or a camel color pen-holder (015/016), once you purchase the refills, but your only concern could be regarding the price which ranges between $4 to $10. There are several other inserts that are available for the TN. Some older ones have been discontinued. You can find a complete list of refills for the passport sized TN here. I had ordered two passport sized refills along with this TN - Refill#002 & 005, both have a simple wrap with a coloured stamp conveying the necessary details including the type of paper and number of pages in it. Adding a refill notebook to TN is pretty easy, by using one of the spare elastic bands to connect the new notebook with an existing one. The elastic band needs to be secured & adjusted around the spine of both these notebooks. Embossed at its bottom-left corner of the back cover is the newer 2016 branding of TRAVELER’S notebook & TRAVELER’S COMPANY, JAPAN & MADE IN THAILAND instead of just the usual MIDORI & MADE IN THAILAND. And that is the only visible change. PHYSICS OF IT (4/6) – RELATIVELY SPEAKING The dimensions of the TN Passport size are 10 X 13.5 cm , with a thickness of 1.2-1.5 cm with two standard 64 page passport refills. A passport is quite portable compared to a regular sized TN. However, I am more at ease with the regular size, given my writing style and preferences. The TN Passport could score very well for other who have a smaller handwriting size. ECONOMIC VALUE (3/6) The traveler notebook and two 64-pages refill cost me around USD 46, with shipping from Japan. While the price might still be low for a comparative analysis (with other shops), it’s still a notebook and a rather small one for me. And once you are locked in, you might have to purchase refills typically costing anywhere between $4 to $10. That’s TN’s formulae for gross margins. TN is also facing increasing competition in e-com from newer & newer faces like 1, 2 and many others. OVERALL (4.3/6) Exquisite Design. Yes. First Mover. That too. MD paper is nice, thick and smooth for all your beloved nibs & inks. I tested a medium nib of Pilot Custom 823 running on Iroshizuku Yama Budo ink inside. And it ran smoothly leaving behind the right amount of ink for shading. The thickness and texture of the MD paper makes even a relatively wet ink dry up pretty fast (less than 18 seconds). Although there is a bit of ghosting. It’s a subjective opinion and you might like the passport more than the regular. I find the regular handy. Then on the inside cover of each refill you have a midori styled passport page to note down your passport details. It’s illogical to travel with this & without your passport, but I still like that act. So if you have already developed a similar cerebral logic and love the style, then get it! Else wait for a year or two and get a limited run to add to your pen & paraphernalia collection. Thank you for going through the review. You can find some more pen & paraphernalia reviews here. REFERENCES MTN Regular Review Traveler’s Company, Japan 10th Anniversary Notebook Mini Midori Passport Refills Leather Maintenance for TN

Ok, I couldn't resist, after having the brown one for about a year with the Midori N°13 insert with its beautiful fountain pen paper, I had to get the camel when this color finally was available again... Here is the link to my unboxing: I hope the link works! JS

I recently purchased a few standard (60ml) ink pots of the camlin royal blue ink. As soon as i laid down the first line. I noticed that the colour has been changed. I had purchased a few ink pots from Mumbai and the other from Ahmedabad. I noticed that no matter the location, the colour now is different than the previous ink. (Both have manufacturing dates of around mid-late 2014) The change is ever so mild, but it is noticeable none the less. The newer colour has become more of a uniform blue which is a bit lighter in hue. The earlier colour had a purple-grey undertone to it which made it a bit more saturated and darker. (I hope all this makes any sense!) I guess it will be better if i just showed the pictures! Here they are. The left one is the new colour. The right one, the old colour. I suppose it is more clearly visible in the last picture. So what are your thoughts? Please share your views. If you haven't noticed it, do you think you will like the new colour? And if you already noticed this, What is your opinion?

Hi everyone, I am researching NY/NJ pens, and today's focus is on Camel/Newark/Secretary brand. The 1935 - 1938 history of Camel is reasonably well covered. Post-1938, not so much. Recently, Jon Veley posted a blog entry on Camel producing floaty pencils into the 1940's. That stirred me up. First of all, he talked about the Secretary Pen Company - but Secretary was a brand of the Newark Pen Company. Are they different? Here's history as I understand it - 1925 - Wustman starts Newark Pen Company. It sells The Newark Pen via mail order, in some sort of coupon scheme. They go on to produce the brands Accountant, Secretary, and Congress. Wustman then goes and gets some Boston high-society types, and starts Camel Pen Company. It seems well funded, as its a prolific national advertiser. The Camel pen that uses ink cartridges doesn't work, and that pen is done in 1938. And that's where it gets fuzzy. Here are bits and pieces: Richard Binder suggests that Wearever purchased Camel, leveraging the fact he saw Camel-branded Wearever pens. I have a Camel Pen with an Arlington NJ hot stamp. Further research showed that Camel moved into Mabie Todd's NJ Arlington premises in 1941I found a Union, NJ address for the Camel Pen Company in a 1946 Directory in Union NJSecretary Pen Company produced pens and pencils from Union NJ into the 1950sNewark Pen Company made awful injection molded fountain pens which they branded Secretary - they look 1940's ish. The reasonable guess would be that Wustman merged the assets of Camel and Newark and moved them to Union. One of the cool things I found is another spelling for Wustman - Wuestman. That led to some new Google results, including a pretty horribly complicated adjustable nib patent from 1931 that adjusted flow and line width. My main question is - can anyone confirm David Kahn and Wearever's involvement in Camel post 1938? Is there any other knowledge out there that I don't have? Wustman is listed as Treasurer of 1946 Camel Pen Company, so its entirely possible it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wearever. For years, Wearever's purchase of Camel was my understanding, but I'm starting to doubt it now.

More like, Red-black derived from Camel. I have used fountain pens all my life, but never once did I change my Ink. Have always been using Camel's Royal Blue and it is my favourite. Recently, I started wondering what it would be to use a different ink. But I was stunned to see the prices of the inks. I love Camel, and thought that I should get their Scarlet Red. But that red was a bit too bold for me (plus it reminded me of errors (as it is a colour my teachers used to correct.)). I wanted something like Oxblood or Havana brown that could be used for writing, and not just editing. Thanks to recipe by @madzaxmax (https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/241111-ink-mixing-experiment/) and using *almost* same proportions, I got this. This was my first attempt at mixing inks. And sorry for my handwriting!

I am sold to Midoris (and Field Notes, hard stuff) and own 6 Notebooks now (and one clone). So far, so good. But: I want just one more by heart. So here is my question, my cry, from the bottom of my heart: Anyone with a Midori TN Regular 5th Camel willing to sell? Thanks for reading. Cheers from Germany Thorsten

I was looking into aquiring a Camel 1968 Medium Nib (http://www.ebay.com/itm/CAMEL-1968-Rosewood-Color-Medium-Nib-Fountain-Pen-new-/150971590994?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23269ba952) for notetaking and school use, but I have some reservations because I have never heard of the manufacturer. I really don't want to go through the hassel of returning it to China if it's a piece of (bleep). Has anyone heard of Camel pens; if so, I would love to hear some feedback. Does anyone know of any cheaper pen brands that preform well compared to their cost?