FP Advice

[de Servantes]

For ink capacity, nothing beats an ED (IMHO, of course).

 

I use 4 of them at work: one each blue, black, green and red ink. I need to refill the blue and black ones about once a month. The green and red last about 3 months.

 

Using Waterman Kultur F-nibs (clear translucent ones) sealed with a dab of grease and filled with MB Blue (I need to empty the bottle, so that I can use it as an inkwell), Noodler's black (when I need tamper-proofing), and Herbin Rouge Caroubier and Vert Reseda.

 

At less than 10 EUR / pen, this has been working for about a year, and never had a leak yet (touching wood right now...)

 

Greetings

 

Miguel

[Kay]

The problem with any bottle-fill pen is that when you run out of ink, you're stuck, unless you also carry a back-up pen. That's why in important note-taking situations I always use a cartridge pen: it isn't hard to switch cartridges mid-stream, and it's easier to carry around a couple of extra cartridges than an extra pen. But I guess if you already have a cartridge pen, you could get a bottle-filler as the main pen and still carry the cart pen as back-up.

[Randal6393]

Agree with Kay, fountain pens are wonderful but subject to 'not now' disorder. My solution is to put several favorites into a small black velvet bag that I acquired somewhere. It occupies a corner in my briefcase and allows me to pick out a fountain pen whenever the one I am currently using decides not to cooperate. Back-ups are great -- that's why I wear a belt and suspenders.

 

Miguel, agree that four pens -- one in each of the standard black, red, blue, and green -- is really nice to have. Love the MontBlanc Royal Blue as well as the Noodler's Black. I'm using Private Reserve for red and green. Guess I will have to try the Herbin inks, hear really great things about them.

[psfred]

Get a Platinum Preppy converted to eyedropper from Pendemonium (or buy a 4.5 oz bottle of Noodler's Black, which will have one in the box). That will fix your gray ink problem as well, and the ink is waterproof to boot. The pen holds several mL of ink, should last a week even taking copious notes during class, and I found the nib to be quite nice. Too fat for me, but I prefer XF nibs -- my favorite is an Esterbrook x550.

 

$24 plus shipping for the ink with pen. If you don't want to stick with black ink, you can also use Legal Lapis (blue-black) or Polar Blue -- however, the Polar Blue will give you bleed through problems where the others won't.

 

Peter

[piembi]

This is another one for a Pelikan M200/250 or a Parker 51.

 

My university years (heavy notetaking) had been accompanied by a M250 and a M200. They never let me down (except that I lost the 250 ). Now I have Pelikan 400s and Parker 51s at the office. They are very different in the way they write but they have two important things in common: both are very reliable daily writers and hold a lot of ink.

[theblackpen]

Another vote for a M200

[Iridium]

The piston reservoir on the M200 holds much more than a converter or certainly a Skrip or Quink cartridge.

 

I doubt that it holds more than a Skrip cartridge--those things can hold 1.5 mL (similar to the long international cartridge). The M200 should be able to hold about twice as much as a typical piston converter, though.