What Prompted Your Interest In Fountain Pens?

[Paddler]

I started using fountain pens when I was in the 5th grade, back in the 1950s. I kept using them because they, in most cases, are better writing tools than ball pens or pencils. (Sometimes you need a ball pen or a pencil, and I use them too.) I didn't really "get into" fountain pens until I inherited a couple of Snorkels and a Hundred Year Pen that needed restoration. I bought a few third tier pens at a flea market and learned to restore them. Then I tackled my heirlooms. That fueled my interest in the different kinds of pens and the writing variations they produce. My heirloom pens are held in reserve for marryin' and buryin' occasions. The others are daily writers. Also in my mix are dip pens made of steel, brass, glass, feather quills, porcupine quills, and reeds. Each has its use in the daily scribamentarium around here.

[terminal]

They are rewards that I give myself (because Santa doesn't come anymore to give me gifts when I was good all year long).

 

Yeah, what's up with that! I feel the same way... where's the magic!? I guess we have to create our own at a certain age

[playtime]

I enjoy the ritual of writing. But it took some time to arrive at fountain pens. i first deployed mechanical pencils--but when i discovered japanese nibs, and shortly thereafter Pelikan nibs, the maddness seized me. Have yet to recover.....

 

J

 

 

[MyNoblePen]

I had the Sheaffer pen set in my early teens. As far back as I can remember, I've had a serious obsession for pens and pencils. I suppose you could call it hoarding. I don't throw them away until their broken beyond all hope. Anyhow, twenty plus years later I see a Rotring 600 fountain for sale in a art store that I was working for. Over a period of a few weeks I would go and ask to see that pen and mull it over some more. Finally I took the plunge and bought it. Up until that point, the Rotring it was the most I'd ever spent on one pen. Now I know that pen was my gateway pen into the immense selection of fine writing instruments available today. It only took that first fountain pen for me to get started into collecting them. Right now I'm going through the Italian phase of my collecting. An Aurora, Stipula, and a Visconti have been added within two weeks. I'm already keeping an eye out for the next one too. Oh and I bought a pen case to carry them around. This particular one I bought holds twelve. At the rate I'm going I'll need more space than that in no time. fountain pens...

[jar]

I had the Sheaffer pen set in my early teens. As far back as I can remember, I've had a serious obsession for pens and pencils. I suppose you could call it hoarding. I don't throw them away until their broken beyond all hope. Anyhow, twenty plus years later I see a Rotring 600 fountain for sale in a art store that I was working for. Over a period of a few weeks I would go and ask to see that pen and mull it over some more. Finally I took the plunge and bought it. Up until that point, the Rotring it was the most I'd ever spent on one pen. Now I know that pen was my gateway pen into the immense selection of fine writing instruments available today. It only took that first fountain pen for me to get started into collecting them. Right now I'm going through the Italian phase of my collecting. An Aurora, Stipula, and a Visconti have been added within two weeks. I'm already keeping an eye out for the next one too. Oh and I bought a pen case to carry them around. This particular one I bought holds twelve. At the rate I'm going I'll need more space than that in no time. fountain pens...

 

While you are in your Italian phase take a look at the reviews of the Grifos, Signum, Montegrappa and Ferrari da Varese pens as well.

[MyNoblePen]

I had the Sheaffer pen set in my early teens. As far back as I can remember, I've had a serious obsession for pens and pencils. I suppose you could call it hoarding. I don't throw them away until their broken beyond all hope. Anyhow, twenty plus years later I see a Rotring 600 fountain for sale in a art store that I was working for. Over a period of a few weeks I would go and ask to see that pen and mull it over some more. Finally I took the plunge and bought it. Up until that point, the Rotring it was the most I'd ever spent on one pen. Now I know that pen was my gateway pen into the immense selection of fine writing instruments available today. It only took that first fountain pen for me to get started into collecting them. Right now I'm going through the Italian phase of my collecting. An Aurora, Stipula, and a Visconti have been added within two weeks. I'm already keeping an eye out for the next one too. Oh and I bought a pen case to carry them around. This particular one I bought holds twelve. At the rate I'm going I'll need more space than that in no time. fountain pens...

 

While you are in your Italian phase take a look at the reviews of the Grifos, Signum, Montegrappa and Ferrari da Varese pens as well.

I returned a Montegrappa Espressione that I bought. It was a new pen on sale. It felt great in the hand but it would have needed some additional professional work to be a good writer. I will check those others you have mentioned. I'm sure that all Montegrappas aren't like that out of the box. I just got a "dud" I suppose. I'd consider myself lucky so far for out of the box pens. I have to order my pens via online avenues and so far the majority have been excellent.

[Kaptenmork]

My interest in pens, have no beginning or end, Its always been there.

[PaperDarts]

I used fountain pens when I was a child and so did everyone else - ballpoint pens in the 1950s were unreliable and globby and on the expensive side if you can believe it. Later I used fibre tip pens and then gel pens more - but I always had a fountain pen around somewhere. In recent years I've used them more because it simply takes less effort to use a fountain pen, and I have a bit of arthritis in my thumbs. Since I discovered this place - and the variety of ink colours to be had - my fountain pen fascination has run completely amok!

[P.A.R.]

My brother's friend gave him a Kaweco Sport for his birthday. I had been interested in quality writing instruments for a while, but had mostly used nicer mechanical pencils (Pentel) since the I hated ballpoints and the refills for the nicer pens appeared to be more expensive than the pens. At that point, of course, I had never seen a fountain pen or known about their availability. I got myself a Pilot Varsity and loved it - though it took me a while to figure out that I was writing with it upside down.

 

From there my first "real" refillable fountain pen was a Charcoal Lamy Safari (EF) that I have to this day, and I now have a reasonable sized collection that has been revised a few times (I went through a mostly impulsive Chinese pen phase.) I'm very happy with my current collection of (mostly) Noodler's pens, Platinum Preppies, and Lamy Safari

Edited March 31, 2012 by P.A.R.

[HandLikeAFist]

My parents used FPs, so they weren't a mystery.

 

I changed schools as a lad, and in the new school, they had already learned cursive; I could barely print. My beatnik teacher said, "Oh, you'll pick it up." Never did, hence my terrible writing, hence my FPN handle.

 

But I did notice that I wrote (a little) better with a fountain pen.

 

I had a MB 149 for fifteen years, but it was stolen, and I sort of moved away from FPs.

 

Then a couple of years ago in Rome, I saw and tried out a couple of Montegrappas. Fabulous. I couldn't afford one, so I picked up a Stypen, which was merely OK.

 

I then became fascinated by French school-kids writing, pre-1965, always fountain or dip pen, always violet. Some research lead me to J. Herbin Violette Pensee, but, hey, I needed something other than my lousy Stypen.

 

So I bought on a whim a Kaweco Sport Classic. And I LOVE it.

 

Now I am looking at various Montegrappa Reminiscence pens.

 

I am also one of the few, it seems, who really prefers cartridges to bottled ink. Luckily, the ink I have settled on for life, maybe, is available in cartridge form.

 

Yrs, Robert

Edited March 31, 2012 by HandLikeAFist

[Pendoodle]

I have always loved smooth writing and good looking pens. I started out buying semi expensive rollerballs and ballpoints in search of the smoothest writer. That's when I purchased my first pen, a Lamy safari fine nib and my life (or wallet) changed forever. Since then I have purchased numerous other pens and each one getting more and more expensive. My latest purchase was a pelikan m205 toledo red with one of Richard Binder's Italifine nibs.

[tdeecy]

I was walking down Madison Avenue about 30 years ago, on my way to Brooks Bros. and I passed a neat little store called "Joon". (no longer there).

The store window was full of beautiful pens. My only writing instruments up until then were Parker Jotter BP pens, which I loved for their large cartridges. I walked inside and bought a Sailor 1911 with a fine nib. It came with a few cartridges and a convertor. I knew nothing about fountain pen lore but after I emptied the cartridges I inserted the convertor and bought a bottle of ink whose identity I have long since forgot. In those days, ink was ink.

Thereafter, I kept my eye open for FPs, and bought, over the years, three Parkers, which I think I described on these boards not long ago to try to ID them. One is a 95, one is a Sonnet, and the 3rd is a 75 (?).

Since discovering these forums I have bought more pens and bottles of inks than I did over the previous 35 years!

 

Thomas/

[Ted A]

In 1965, Mr. Crouch, 9th grade English teacher announced that we would be required to use fountain pens. I promptly headed down to Leather's grocery store and picked up a blister pack Sheaffer with 3 cartridges. The school was the second poorest in the state at the time and I suspect he was told that many of his students couldn't afford the pens. But I really enjoyed the pen a lot. There was more creativity and beauty to my writing than I could ever achieve with a ballpoint. Cartridges were expensive. Somewhere my father got a bottle of Skrip Peacock Blue and I got a syringe and needle and refilled my cartridges with the Peacock blue ink. It was exotic then. Today I have a very hard time with turquoise inks.

I went to law school in the 70s and my wife gave me a couple of Mont Blanc which now appear to be quite expensive. And I used several others as well.

Then in the late 1990s I left private practice and went to work first for a computer company and after that at another and the need to use a keyboard and not needing to hand write things lead to my pens being ignored. It's amazing they didn't freeze solid. I thing I may have had one sitting with ink for 8 or 9 years.

Next step is that about a year ago I got an iPad. Wanting to play with it I got a program that accepted handwriting with a finger or a stylus. (The history of writing first with fingers, then sticks, pens and now back to fingers has some interesting implications.) So to use my ipad I began looking at journalling blogs to get ideas. Which lead to discussions of quality journals, fountain pens and the whole variety of inks that are available today. I dug out my old pens and don't even want to think about the number of pens I've purchased since the first of the year.

And now I am looking for reasons to use my pens and write by hand. (but I still use the iPad to read FPN)

[achenm]

When I was an exchange student in Germany eleven years ago, I discovered that most of the drugstores there carried tons of cheap German FPs. I remember being baffled because up until then I had thought of fountain pens as extremely rare, strictly luxury items--definitely not the sort of things that an ordinary person like me would ever use. Turns out that German schools have kids use fountain pens while learning to write.

 

Anyway, I bought two (a super scratchy Pelikano, and then a much smoother Safari) just for the novelty of it, and because I have a nostalgic streak. Then I realized how much easier it was to write with the Safari than any ballpoint I had ever owned. There's been no turning back since.

Edited March 31, 2012 by achenm

[Spector]

I became interested when my grandfather gave me his old parker 45. it didnt write very well but it got me hooked.

[terminal]

Next step is that about a year ago I got an iPad. Wanting to play with it I got a program that accepted handwriting with a finger or a stylus. (The history of writing first with fingers, then sticks, pens and now back to fingers has some interesting implications.) So to use my ipad I began looking at journalling blogs to get ideas. Which lead to discussions of quality journals, fountain pens and the whole variety of inks that are available today. I dug out my old pens and don't even want to think about the number of pens I've purchased since the first of the year.

And now I am looking for reasons to use my pens and write by hand. (but I still use the iPad to read FPN)

 

In a sort of strange twist, I just sold my iPad and used the money to buy pens. The ultimate problem with the iPad, for me, was the virtual keyboard... ironcially

[Ted A]

Next step is that about a year ago I got an iPad. Wanting to play with it I got a program that accepted handwriting with a finger or a stylus. (The history of writing first with fingers, then sticks, pens and now back to fingers has some interesting implications.) So to use my ipad I began looking at journalling blogs to get ideas. Which lead to discussions of quality journals, fountain pens and the whole variety of inks that are available today. I dug out my old pens and don't even want to think about the number of pens I've purchased since the first of the year.

And now I am looking for reasons to use my pens and write by hand. (but I still use the iPad to read FPN)

 

In a sort of strange twist, I just sold my iPad and used the money to buy pens. The ultimate problem with the iPad, for me, was the virtual keyboard... ironcially

 

 

Oh my goodness! You are a Luddite aren't you?!

[inkstainedruth]

I had some variety of cartridge pen when I was a kid (no idea now what). When I was in high school and college, I liked marker pens, but cured of the habit when I went camping and it rained, and the pouch where my checkbook was in got soaked (the last entry happened to be in bp so I fortunately didn't lose everything, but the CPA in the same campsite made fun of me).

Fast forward about 2 decades. I started to read a book called _The Artist's Way_, which is a creativity course. One of the things you do is keep what is a called a morning pages journal, where you get up every day and write 3 pages in it (before you do *anything* else...). I decided that I would get a nice cartridge pen to help me stick with it, and bought a cheapie Parker at Staples, and a pack of cartridges. After a while the rubberized section sort of disintegrated, so I bought a second one. When the same thing happened I couldn't find them anymore, so I went to a specialized stationers in downtown Pittsburgh and bought a $9 Parker Vector. I had trouble getting cartridges in anything but black at places like Staples (and even at Weldins I had to special order them sometimes).

When I (temporarily) lost the Vector in January I went back to Weldins, but the Vectors were no longer available there, and most of the pens they did have were unaffordable; I bought a Pilot Varsity for $4, but it's been haphazard as best -- wrote three days no problem, then stopped dead, then after a week I got about a line or two out of it (tried it a couple of days ago and it's writing again -- go figure). But then I was back to the search for another (affordable) pen. Eventually I bought the Parker Urban kit at Office Max, but then started looking for a better selection of ink colors, which led me first to a bunch of website dealers (a friend who I didn't know was into FPs had written a customer review on the Goulet Pens website, so I was picking his brains for a couple of weeks) and then to here. I eventually had to sign up because I couldn't read some of the ink reviews otherwise.

Now it's a month and a half later and I'm about to order a bunch of ink samples and a couple of other pens.... And have been soaking up as much information in different threads as I can, and have over 160 posts under my belt, and have been contemplating getting an avatar photo taken of the inkwells I bought, and asking questions, and yesterday I knit my first pen cosy, except for the strap because I need to learn how to do I-cord (thanks to Fiberdrunk for the pattern info).....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[welch]

In the 3rd grade, about 1956, we began to learn cursive writing, imitating the letters on a long green-background chart with white characters. A year or two later, we were expected to hand in all assignments in ink -- except, of course, for arithmetic. We all used Sheaffer cartridge pens. In 7th grade, I got a Parker 45, and used it for six years, re-filling the converter every morning with Sheaffer Washable Black (Number 62...with RC-35). Years later I became a computer programmer, and wrote everything in pencil or ballpoint until Windows 95.

 

Until about '96, I ignored the mouse, although I still have the SAA CUA Advanced Interface Guide, which came with the Windows 2.11 SDK. I did everything by keyboard, which balances the stress on your hands.

 

Eventually, my right hand came to shape itself like a mouse, and my handwriting disintegrated.

 

I had tried fountain pens every few years, but nothing quite worked. Then I bought a Sonnet, and found that writing with a fountain pen was like therapy for my hand. Incidentally, I was sad when Terry, owner of Fountain Pen Hospital, told me that Sheaffer had discontinued their "topwell" bottles and changed Skrip's ink formula. It was like coming home after many years to discover that the town has changed.

 

In a few years, I accumulated far too many FP's, including about two dozen P51s and eight or ten P61s...not as a collection but always searching for the just-right smoothness. It's time to thin down the accumulation: just the pens that I use often. Each pen seems to have its own personality...each nib is different, no two 51s feel exactly alike, and a 51 feels dramatically different from a Pelikan or a Sheaffer PfM. That makes it hard.

Edited April 1, 2012 by welch

[ddustinn]

A friend of mine got me an Osmiroid calligraphy set at a yard sale, just because he thought I'd like it. Once I realized how repairable and economically and environmentally friendly fountain pens were, I was hooked. I love the thought of only having to use a few pens for the rest of my life, not throwing away a ridiculous amount of Sharpie pens and disposable rollerballs like I did before. While I thoroughly enjoy it, the actual writing experience is icing on the cake. My morals and conscience won't let me pay ridiculous (in my opinion) amounts of money on fountain pens. I don't want my pens to be a status symbol while I'm trying to be humble at the same time.

 

Just my two cents.