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New to the forum and relatively new to fountain pen collecting. I have a particular interest in the more vintage pens and have just purchased a Waterman 55. A lot of threads and websites mention safe inks to use in these older lever filler pens, but I'd just like confirmation on safe inks for this particular hard rubber material pen. My current ink of choice is Aurora Black, which I believe is fine to use, but would I be better off to use Waterman or Sheaffer for example? Additionally, I will only be using black ink for this pen.

Waterman Bleu Sérénité / Waterman Serenity Blue Dear FPN friends, This time an ink review of another ink manufacturer, but... Still with a little touch of De Atramentis to it The ink in this review I received with my Waterman Carène DeLuxe Fountain Pen. Although it came in cartridges (quoting my Fountain Pen Hero SBRE Brown :" Real man use bottled ink" , and I believe real woman too) I really love the ink. It is just the type of vivid blue I love most. What about the touch of De Atramentis??? As always in my handwritten reviews I do a little story. As some of you might know I love De Atramentis inks and I am in frequent contact with the manufacturer, the utterly friendly Dr.Franz-Josef Jansen ( an advantage of being a polyglot) Dr Jansen kindly allowed me to translate the article on ink history on his website www.die-tintenmanufaktur.de I find these articles very interesting, and for sharing them with you, I will translate them for you . In his article "Ink history antiquity" I found the name of Maurice Jametel who wrote an illustrated book of ancient chinese ink called. "L'encre de Chine,son histoire et sa fabrication". I have retrieved the book from archive.org and I am now busy with translating the text into English, which may take a little while, since my French is a bit rusty (Have to work on that) and I am not native speaker of English... These translations will be published as soon as possible.... Vielen Dank Herr Dr. Jansen (thank you very much Dr Jansen)... Finally... On topic now... Let's start with the cons... Shading is very little and waterproof ?? er.. not really. My advice do not write in the shower . And now the happy ending... It is smooooth!!! and I find the blue very beautiful... Down here are the technical specs (as suggested by Ann Finley 2007) points 1-5 1 = 5= Fountain Pens: Waterman Carène DeLuxe,medium Nib Paper: Leonardo Ringbuch,average quality school note book made in Austria Drying time: Approx. 8-10 seconds with a medium nib / quite long with 1,5 Italic nib points 2 Flow: like a ballet dancer on speed points: 5 Wetness: certainly wet enough for a land animal points 3-4 Lubrication: very smooth points: 5 Bleeding: little points: 4 Shading: very little points: 2 Waterproof: just a tad 1 Package: Cartidges and bottles points: 4 (bottle is quite nice but the not very special, although the label is beautiful) Availabilty: Excellent points: EU 5 Quality: qualité superbe!!! fabriqué en (la douce) France points: 4 Simply a good ink with a colour I love for everyday work.. Hope the review was interesting enough for you.... Next time another ink review of , one of them will De Atramentis off course, but also a review of J. Herbin's 1670... une autre grand' encre de la Grande Nation. For those of you who are interested... I wlil publish the translations of Dr. Jansen's research on ink history and the book on chinese ink under "Inky thoughts" as soon as possible Kindest Regards Peter Vlutters

Here is Waterman Brown (I hate the name "Absolute Brown"). It's one of my favorite brown inks. It's well behaved, has an attractive and subtle green sheen when it's laid on thick, it's cheap, and it's widely available. http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/661/tJhMPS.jpg

I'm about a week behind on introducing myself! My name is Kevin and I'm from Oklahoma City. Last week I was at Galleria Mall in Texas and I wondered by a store and saw a few Cross pens glistening in the window so I HAD to stop by and take a look. After visiting with the salesman for a while we got on the topic of fountain pens. I'd never owned, or even written with one before. He handed me a 12 year old Japanese fountain pen and let me give it a try (please forgive me, I don't remember the name of the pen) and I instantly fell in love. I asked him to point me in the direction of a "starter pen" and he pointed to a case full of Lamy pens. I picked out a nice white, medium nib pen and went ahead and picked up a converter for it as well. I got to visit with the salesman and another gentleman who had wandered into the store (who was a regular and quite the pen aficionado if I may add) and they educated me on the importance of using good inks and paper etc. I couldn't WAIT to get back to the hotel room and practice. I think I went through the first cartridge of ink in about 4 days, so then I had to go find some ink to try out the refillable cartridge. When I got back to Oklahoma I went to a local Hobby Lobby, hoping they'd have something. I found their (very limited) fountain pen and calligraphy section. I found what they called "calligraphy ink" and thought "surely it's the same thing, this should work" and found a nice "grass green" ink and really like the color. I got home, filled up the cartridge and popped it into my Lamy. The pen seemed to write great that evening, then the next day when I got to work I noticed that the ink wasn't really flowing from the pen. I had to work the nib back and forth, up and down and all around before the ink began to flow through the nib again. This was my first lesson in fountain pens and ink. If an ink is cheap, there's a reason for that (not unlike most things in life). I quickly went online and found a similar green ink made by Waterman. I ordered the ink and received it within a few days and immediately went to work cleaning my pen out, disassembling it all the way down to removing the nib. Once I got the gummed up ink out, I filled the refillable cartridge with the new ink. Once I wrote with the pen and the new ink I instantly knew the difference in inks. I have been extremely satisfied with my pen (and now good ink) and I've practiced my writing and penmanship for the last week and I feel like I'm really starting to get a feel for the pen and how to use it. I'm very excited to be a part of this group and I look forward to sharing with you all and reading your stories in the future!