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Greetings. Was referred here by Goulet Pens support. Looking forward to the experience

Hello everyone I've just joined FPN having been a fountain pen fan since I firsted used one at school, age 7. I use fountain pens daily as part of my job and so am keen to find out about reliable pens for everyday use as well as those special pens for special occasions. With thanks James

Hi, everyone! I wanted to introduce myself to this network. I have been a long-time pen enthusiast, and am the owner of luxury pen retailer Truphae, Inc. We specialize in high-end luxury pens from companies like Aurora, Montegrappa, ST Dupont, Visconti, etc...and have great relationships with them as well. We also carry brands such as Pelikan, Cartier, and many others. Our goal is to find the coolest pens around, particularly rare ones that many other people would have a hard time sourcing. We not only sell, but buy and consign as well. Looking forward to getting to know you all better! ~Chris

Good afternoon! New to the forum. Not really a collector of pens though I do have several. I make a pen or two every now and then aswell. Thank you FPN. Russ

Hello everyone. I have a Parker fountain pen which was given to me by my father many years ago. I have just given it to my granddaughter. We would like to know the name, age and any other information we can get on it. It has a squeeze fill type cartridge. Please see the two pics I have attached. Thank you, Craig.

Hi all, I live in London and have recently re-discovered the inky world of fountain pens. I used them regularly at school when I was but a mere stripling, as all my inky pocketed shirts will testify! but that was a while ago. Anyway hey-ho here we are a whole heap of years later and I have just purchased a Sailor Professional gear in silver and a Kweco Dia 2 also with silver livery. (I'm not a gold type of guy) I also acquired some Sailor and Pilot Iroshizuku inks. As my pens haven't arrived yet and i'm bursting with apprehension I intend to cover my body from head to toe in ink I already have and dance the dance of eagerness until they do! Uncle Meat.

Hi everyone — I've been lurking on the info forums for months, so I'm glad to finally join. Thanks to all for being such a cool community. I snagged my first fountain pen late last year and fell in love. I do much of my writing by hand, and fountain pens have changed my literary life for the better. I'm originally from Colorado but currently live in Providence, RI. My three favorite pens so far: Platinum 3776 (my only gold nib), TWSBI Eco, and Noodler's Ebonite Konrad. Still searching for that everyday-writer ink though... Happy writing.

Long-time fountain pen fascinated individual, who for some reason, is having a nasty flare up of fountain pen fever and just now discovered this extraordinary web site and community. I don’t remember anymore how I even learned about fountain pens to become interested in them sometime in my late teens. I think I might have hinted/ asked for a pen for my high school graduation and I received a non-fountain pen which I distinctly remember going down town to exchange for what I really wanted- a gorgeous, slightly-marbled brown Parker with gold trim (which I still have an cherish). Over the decades my interest in FP has spiked and receded for other interests (music, first-edition hard-cover books, mechanical watches, etc. cheap hobbies!). I’ve mostly purchased new pens but in my most recent fountain pen fever, I’m obsessed with older examples, especially early Waterman and Parker. The Wahl-Eversharp company has come into my notice and that’s yet another rabbit hole to get lost in. I look forward to adding to my small collection and learning from the amazing knowledge base on this site.

hi guys. just joined the "FPN" after i was looking for this pen my dad had bought back in the 90s. growing up, we used fountain pens at school. i almost always had a parker vector (which i kept on loosing) or a bunch of hero (parker 51 look alike) pens while my sister had an actual parker 51. i was going through our old boxes and came across a pen set that my dad had picked up at an expo back around 1997. it was a "pen quest 2000" all steel body ballpoint, roller ball and fountain pen. i looked it up online and it brought me to the fountain pen network where someone had posted pictures of. the one i have is slightly different but it was nice to hear that someone else also had it. i wonder how much it would be worth today. i got back into fountain pens recently and have just ordered my first "fancy" pen. ive ordered a Montblanc 146. this is after i had been experimenting with some local and chinese pens. i currently wish i had kept the fountain pens from back when i was still in school as i really miss the parker vector and the beautiful marble red piston filling waterman i had back in highschool. i didnt really appreciate them back then and i remember i had dropped my waterman on the floor and bent the gold plated nib plus i never liked how it kept on bleeding through the paper i was using at the time. considering the crappy copy paper i was using back then and the fact that the waterman was an absolute gusher. i really wish i had kept it and would have appreciated it more. ive also been experimenting with mixing inks to get more shades. mixed the apache sunset from noodlers with the run of the mill pelican royal blue 4001.....it gave me a really vibrant olive green somehow. has anyone else experimented with ink mixing? or am i just wasting the expensive inks?! haha im thinking about experimenting with food coloring and see if i can come up with some unique shades (for much cheaper price) good to be on here. hopefully i can get some of you guys to respond on this.

My intro: a 4-month noob to fountain pens, thrilled owner of 13 and hoping for 3 more under the Christmas tree. Discovered them while following a couple of authors I admire who are aficionados (hi, Elizabeth Bear, Amal el-Mohtar, if you happen to be members here!). Not quite sure how I've managed to live my life for as long as I have without fountain pens ever really falling within my radar (I'm a grandmother) but they have now and no looking back. Discovering fountain pens has been life-changing for me. They compel me to journal which is vital to my well-being. And they add an organic magic to my creative writing, channeling my imagination onto paper (loooove Clairefontaine).The more I use a fountain pen, the more it becomes an extension of me rather than just writing equipment. Which is why I name each of mine, usually something having to do with writing or literature. (Feel free to judge but I know I can't be the only one.) My collection currently includes Pilot Metros, Lamys, one Plat Preppy, one Monteverde Regatta Sport, Jinhaos and Nemo Singularities. I prefer an XF to F nib and wet ink for crisp, speedy writing. Don't have a grail pen in mind yet and have yet to explore vintage pens. Am a bit obsessed with Lamy AL-Stars. (The 2019 SE color will be ... ??? Dying to find out.) So, hi.

I just found this forum and it seems to be just the place to possibly help with a problem that's about 60 years old! All I have to do now is work out whereabouts will be the correct place to post it! The pen is an ancient Mabie Todd item from around the turn of the 20th century, any ideas on where I should post the request with photos would be useful please.

I have enjoyed using and collecting fountain pens on and off for many years and have now become interested in restoring them myself. FPN looks like the perfect place to acquire this knowledge.

Hello everyone! I am a law student from Los Angeles and in New York for Law School. I browsed these forums for a long time before actually deciding to become a member. Fountain Pens give me a break from the proverbial misery of law school, and an outlet to express myself in an industry where being outside of the norm is often condemned. My current workhorse F.P. is my LAMY2K occasionally alternated with my emerald and gold Visconti Salvador Dali. I am a big fan of Montblanc Pens--especially the limited editions. I also love the 1930's-period classics. Cheers, and looking forward to interacting with all of you! Jacob M.

Hello everyone! Ive been into fountain pens for the last year now and have used them for everything from flight training to survival training. My main work horse is the Pilot Metropolitan with a fine nib with Kon-Peki. Somehow messed up entering my username when I signed up. Should have been 395Canav

Good morning. I just wanted to (re) introduce myself as a new member. I'm what I think of as a dedicated pen dabbler of many years' duration (nearly 30 by my estimate). Early on, I collected brands (Parker, Pelikan mostly) -- new, vintage, in between! My collection was branching out to pretty much anything that caught my eye, then kids came along so my focus (time, $, energy) necessarily shifted. I found myself using Pilot roller balls etc at work and had only a few fountain pens in rotation. Starting about 2 years ago, phoenix-like my FP passion re-awoke but in a new direction. I "discovered" the joys of steel nibs, fairly inexpensive pens (FPR, Noodlers, Safari/Al Star, TWSBI), American small batch pens (Karas Kustoms, Franklin-Christoph) and Faber-Castell. Re-joining FPN became a lifestyle must!

Hello everybody, I just joined Fountain Pen Network after a recent joining of the fountain pen world. I've used cheap ballpoint almost all my life until earlier this year, when I saw some fountain pens at Office Depot and thought I would try it out. They were wonderful! Since then, I have purchased many pens. I am so glad I threw away all my old pens. (Pilot Ballpoints, a dime a dozen!) I am really looking forward to being a part of FPN. Thanks again!

I've had pens in my hands most of my life. I started out as an art director, retired as a marketing director. My best pen is a 30 year old fat Mont Blanc, but these days most of my pens are <$100. I discovered this site through it's sister site on Facebook. Love hearing and learning about fountain pens and ink. Regards, Ed

Good evening, [well it is here] Having just bought a new fountain pen - and resurrected some others from my various hidy-holes, drawers etc. - I have started on an effort to improve my dreadful handwriting. I am well into retirement and actually have very little reason (opportunity, zest, whatever) to write but, when I do, I am pretty ashamed of how much my handwriting has deteriorated. When I was working I was often paid compliments with regard to my "nice signature", which was actually about the most writing I did even then. So, I'm on a quest to remedy that! My wife has bought me a very nice Lamy pen to encourage my efforts! However, today's early scratchings initially disappointed me as the ink seemed a little unwilling to flow. I picked up my Waterman and tried with that and, while not perfect, at least I was getting legible results. The fault, I suspected, was the nib or the flow of ink thereunto - what to do? Having found your site and read a little I was encouraged to find others had experienced problems, but I was unwilling to take abrasives to the nib, so I tried a little hand-soap, from the kitchen 'squirty bottle', and applied a touch to the nib and washed it away with a little filtered tap water. Bingo! I've fixed myself up with a 'writing slope' (old veneered cupboard door) and real blooming paper, from a specialist shop (Scriptum) in Oxford. I don't have pretensions to Copper-plate but I live in hopes of folk being able to decipher my greetings cards etc. without my having recourse to the dreaded keyboard (hush, I'm using one now!). I've also a Cross fountain pen (leaving gift) and an almost antique Parker to take out and exercise....... Very best wishes, BikerD

Nice to join your community! I've collected pens since 1996. I was working then. Now I'm retired. I have nothing to write each month now but a rent check! It's very sad, so every now and then I open up my Clairefontaine paper pad and write a letter to a friend. Yes, a letter. On paper. And then I mail it at the post office with a stamp! I'm not a hoarder but my apartment is full of my pens, mainly fountain pens. My wife started collecting, mainly roller balls. We have an ENORMOUS number of pens, and we are obsessed with using them all (although I have one pen, and one pen only, that I placed into a hidden place as soon as I received it!). My oldest pen is my 1899 model Moore's Safety Pen. My newest pen is my 2017 Boston Safety Pen. Fie on technological progress!

New fountain pen enthusiast, so far a fan of Conklin, Pilot, and Lamy. Old wireless telecomm professional, converted a layoff to retirement, in the process of reinventing myself as a free-range English as a second teacher. Identity politics: white, cis-gendered, ace woman in the United States. Used to be a political moderate, but appear to have been shoved left. Prone to babbling when unsure.

Bonjour FP fans - Well after a long time reading the blogs & reading up on advice & tips I thought it about time I joined. Living in France, Haute-Savoie next to Geneva & returning to the UK next year Slowly building my FP collection : - Cross Townsend - in Lapis Lazuli / 14k medium (with matching ball pen & propelling pencil) - Lamy 2000 makralon / 14k medium - TWSBI Vac mini / steel medium - Jinhao X750 « Shimmering Sands » with Goulet no. 6 medium nib (surprisingly well balanced & lovely to write with) - Pilot Metropolitan / steel medium (everyday « knock-about ») - Pilot Plumix for dabbling in calligraphy on this years Christmas cards with Diamine shimmering ink - looks great - About to get Pilot Custom 74, (demonstrator blue - what else !) still deciding which nib medium / soft medium or broad to be as close as possible to a « European » medium nib (i.e Lamy 2000 medium) Looking forward to being a part of the FP discussions A bientot - Teddy

I've been seeing/hearing lots about this Fountain Pen Network, and decided to check it out for myself. I inherited one of my dad's pens he used during the war, but it's kaput. Need to find someone capable of restoring it to use, without losing the patina. Also have 3 Lamy Vistas, 2 Nemosine Singularitys (going for more they write great when they work), my 30yo Schaeffer (had 3 lost 2 in all the moves) which I retired as soon as I got my 1st Lamy. And a pen from Fountain Pen Revolution, my first pen to use the body as ink holder. Here to learn & discover more, and make pen friends. Cheers, Joe Sasser Beaumont, TX

Hi, Just got up and running on this site and I'm new to collecting/using FP's. Looks like a great site with a wealth of knowledge to be had. -Robby

Hello fountain pen fans, I just recently joined the fountain pen community after purchasing a very basic Franklin Covey Freemont and a Pilot Metropolitan a couple of days ago. However, I have been a long time stationary addict for many years (I started with mechanical pencils). This network's pen guides and reviews have been phenomenal and undoubtedly launched my FP interest. I was hesitant at first to start using a fountain pen because I thought it was going to be messy and complicated. However, once i picked up a baseline fountain pen I immediately fell in love; the feel when writing with a fountain pen is an experience in itself. I can't wait to expand my collection. Currently, I have many different coloured inks being shipped to me and soon I will buy the Lamy Safari. Through this community I hope to expand my knowledge of fountain pens,expand my collection and become a contributing member to help others. Thanks Drew

Hello everyone from New Jersey! I spent 20 plus years in the pen retail industry, I look forward to discussing collecting and will eventually use the classifieds to thin out my extensive collection. I just found not one but two of the Mont Blanc Diary and Collectors' guides. I forgot I even had them! Have a good day!