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If anyone here from Sydney still uses the discontinued Pilot Petit1 fountain pens, and dread the day when it's no longer possible to buy new/replacement cartridges for the model (even if just for refilling with one's inks of choice; cartridges shell don't last forever), Dymocks on George Street in the CBD is selling off its remaining stock of Pilot Petit cartridges at 50%-off, bringing the price to AUD $1.99 for a 3-pack. When I left earlier this afternoon, there were still seven or eight 3-packs in red or orange in the bucket, alongside maybe four Pilot Petit3 brush-tipped pens also at 50%-off (which, I guess, makes them $2.99 each).

How do you store your pen spare parts, ink converters, etc.? My wife finally managed to get me to clean up some of my mess, ahead of friends visiting (which is quite rare for us). I have boxes of pen spare parts, standalone or replacement nibs and nib units, dip pen handles and nibs, ink cartridges and converters, tools (such as tiny wrenches) for pen maintenance, water brush pens, a stamping kit to produce an outline image on swatch cards, makeup applicators for swabbing ink, display stands for (photographing) swatch cards, surplus Chinese pens, dedicated cheap pens for holding certain iron-gall inks and pigment inks so that they're always on the ready, etc. All of which, until recently, used to sit in a precarious pile (or ‘tower’) on one of the unused dining chairs, and it's hard to either move them or hide them away from sight all at once. Just as well that I also have a hoard of ‘spare’ storage boxes, document trays, etc. This one proved suitable beyond my expectations, even though of course it couldn't hold all of that type of bits and bobs; I still have dozens of new Sailor, Platinum, and Pilot converters, as well as retail boxes of ink cartridges and new surplus (not just Chinese, but also Japanese and European) fountain pens filling up mini-crates and crammed into a huge drawer elsewhere. Take a guess how much stuff it holds for me! This is not nearly the “all laid out” view, when there are stacks and layers inside the smaller boxes themselves: All of the plastic boxes shown were bought in Daiso, with the exception of this one:

I'm pretty new to the fountain pen thing, but have acquired a bunch of pens. For the pens themselves, I have them in a couple of travel cases, and a big folio for the ones I don't have inked up (though I have more inked than not). However, a bunch of my pens came with cases (like the pilot metropolitans, of which I now have 3), and some had cartridges that I replaced with converters, or squeeze converters I replaced with better converters. And instruction manuals and whatnot. Does anyone have a cool/convenient way of storing all these items? Right now my instinct is to put them all in a box, but I have so many boxes of things, and one more box of things would just get lost. Something more permanent would be great.

Hello all! I recently purchased my very first fountain pen - a Pilot Metropolitan Fine nib. I've had it for 2 days. It's been lovely. (Translation: I can feel my hand after writing a English essay) Anyways, I did some calculations for ink usage that I figured would be worth sharing. Any input you can give me on the accuracy of my calculations is very much welcome! I'm going into college in the fall, and have therefore calculated based off of a college schedule (not including holidays, in-semester-breaks, etc.) of 15 weeks, or 75 days. Over estimation is better than under estimation! Based on some research (thanks FPN), I have selected the values of 1 cartridge/day and 0.5 cartridge/day as reasonable - 1 c/d for super-heavy-totally-overestimating calculations and 0.5 c/d for more reasonable light note taking. If anyone wants to know the specific math I used, just speak up. Double the numbers for the whole, two-semester school year. These calculations are based on the Amazon price for Pilot Namiki 0.9 mL black cartridges at $5.03 for a pack of 12, but with the numbers provided you could calculate based on other cartridges. If you wanted to, you could probably calculate this in mL for bottled inks, but I'm really trying to not get into bottled inks for a while - no way my mother would let me buy bottled. Cartridges per semester: - Maximum usage (1 c/d) = 75 cartridges - Reasonable usage (0.5 c/d) = 37.5 cartridges Packs per semester: - Maximum usage (1 c/d) = 6.25 packs (round to 7) - Reasonable usage (0.5 c/d) = 3.125 packs (round to 4) Cost per semester: - Maximum usage (1 c/d) = $35.21 - Reasonable usage (0.5 c/d) = $20.12 As a bonus, I calculated the approximate cost differential between fountain pen ink and Frixion pen ink (second favorite pen, behind my FP) as 29.5% more per mL. I've got a full 12 pack now, so I'm fine and dandy till the end of this semester, even if I'm using nearly 1 cartridge a day (most likely not) so it's not that big an issue. I want to purchase ink enough for a semester BEFORE said semester, so I'm trying to math my way into reasonable number of packs to buy in August-ish. What do you think of my projections? Are they on the nose or wildly inaccurate? I really really don't want to overstock or worse, under stock. Thanks!

Trying to succeed at doing things I need to do in order to share what I am not using anymore. Well, this one is a bunch of ink cartridges for a Lamy. I know you can use them in Safaris since that is all I own and believe they were purchased to use with them. I can't guarantee any specific colors. I have mostly reds, some purples, might be only one or two blues, a black. Really, if you are interested, hope you won't mind being surprised. You can also refill the cartridges once you finish using any of them with your own ink. You just need a syringe and you have a way to use your Lamy with an ink cartridge and ink of your choosing. Can't guarantee how many you will receive, depends on the interest. You must like to use red or purple ink. May be another color, but can't guarantee. PM interest. I'll let you know when they are no longer available. USA interest only.

Just thought I'd mention for Brits - Waterstones have little containers of 6 J Herbin carts for £2.50

We've just received a shipment of Kombi Patrone double ended cartridges from ONLINE in Germany. These cartridges have a tip at one end that fits Parker and Lamy and a Standard Cartridge tip at the other end. We've got blue, black, brown, green, pink, red, turquoise and an interesting shade of violet. $3.50 for a pack of 5 cartridges plus $5.00 flat fee delivery within Australia. Also new are Beifa see through plastic fountain pens at $4.95. These pens take a standard cartridge or Jinhao converter and are great pens for the price. They come in black, blue, red and green. http://justwrite.com.au/justwrite8/images/categories/kombi-patrone-lamy-parker-standard-cartridge.png