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The Parker Ingenuity has been in the market for a few months. On the web, it looks nice but expensive. Has anyone had the opportunity to use one? Are there any faults in the construction or design? Thanks for your comments.

After reading many postings on this and other forums regarding J. Herbin's 1670 inks and their apparent ability to clog pens, I decided to share my experience with them after some 6 months of usage on several pens on an almost daily basis. Hope this is helpful. Like many pen enthusiasts the world over, I became truly hooked to the idea of using J. Herbin's inks after watching some videos depicting their shinning and sheening characteristics, specially those of Emaraude de Chivor, which is without a doubt, the most fascinating ink on this earth for those of us creative types (I'm a designer and photographer). Yet, after doing my proper research on them, I came across many, many posts, stating that these inks were the equivalent of Armageddon for the majority of fountain pens. A few lone voices claimed otherwise, but the general consensus was to stay away from them. Low and behold, I ordered 3 bottles: Emaraude de Chivor, Blue Ocean, and Stormy Grey. I filled 2 Lamy Safari pens with Ocean Blue (M nib) and Stormy Grey (F nib) and then I filled an Al-Star with a stub 1.5mm nib with Emeraude. After using them for nearly 3 months (refilling the same pens or inking similar pens), I've had experienced no flow issues whatsoever. No hard starts, no skipping, no clogging of any sort. The only "issue" I got to experience is that the finer the nib, the less gold flecks that will end up on your paper. After this initial test, I decided to convert my brand new transparent Kaweco Sport Classic with an M nib into an eyedropper and the ink I decided to fill it up with was Ocean Blue. Kaweco's are known to have starting and skipping issues when brand new. Mine not only turned to be and excellent writer right away, but the conversion also helped turn the feed into a very wet one. After 3 months of constant use, I'm yet to experience issues. BTW the gold flecks look gorgeous laying on the barrel and match the pen nib, clip and markings in a lovely way! One thing that I have noted thou is that the gold flecks tend to get everywhere into the pen. My eyedropper has some flecks -with ink- stuck between the feed and the section, it also appears trapped in some parts of my converters and, needless to say, they are also present on the feeds. Yet, so far, they seem to be quite easy to clean off. The only bad experience I've had so far has been with a Kaweco AL-Sport that I filled with Stormy Grey. Right after filling it, all it came out the nib were gold flecks, not a single drop of ink! I shook the pen hoping for the specks to settle but it never worked. I had to extract the ink from the cartridge, and then it all took to clean and unclog the pen, was a standard rinse with water. This pen has since been inked-up twice with other inks and so far, it works flawlessly. The AL-Sport uses a different feed than that of the Classic, so maybe it is a bit more restrictive. I have also used the Emeraude ink on my Pilot Parallel pen without any issues. The only thing I should note here is that the gold flecks didn't show on the lettering work I did with this combination. I will fill it up again and update this post to reflect the outcome. So, to recap, I truly consider these inks to be pretty safe for most pens and they seem pretty easy to clean-off. I will refrain myself from putting them on vintage pens or expensive ones just to remain on the safe side. But other than that, they all prove why J. Herbin has been around for more than a hundred years!

TWSBI Diamond 580 Rose Gold Edition in Fine Writing Performance Review If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here!

I noticed a really interesting phenomena the other day. I've got into printing my own dot grid, and noticed that when I did this through my laser printer. Whilst testing the printing, I ran some cheap copier paper through it. Now this same copier paper is awful to write on. It exhibits far to much feathering to write on. When I printed the dot grid on this paper however, the heat from the laser printer seemed to drastically improve it's performance. This evening, I decided to test my hypothesis with an iron and the same copier paper to see what effect it would have. I ironed half the sheet, and left the other half un-ironed. The first photo is written with a Visconti HS stub, with Diamine Salamander. This has a really heavy ink flow, so thought it would be ideal for the test. The second image is from the un-ironed segment of the page. Anyone else come across this phenomena? I get the feeling that this is what Rhodia are doing to their paper..!