What Was Your Last Impulsive Pen Acquisition?

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, deuter said:

Included a gold (not sure whether it’s real gold) CC. There were also 2 black cartridges.

I plugged in one and using it , very smooth writing. Now to improve my handwriting!

If I were you I would buy bottled inks, and use the converter that came with your pen.

 

Why?
Because:

• ink bought in bottles costs only about 1/5-to-1/4 of the price of the same amount of ink bought in cartridges;
• buying ink in bottles frees you from ‘vendor lock-in’;
• it enables you to use far more colours/types of inks than the now rather-limited range that Parker still makes;

 

Also, and perhaps even more importantly:

• filling your pen by ‘sucking ink up’ with the converter actually helps to keep your pen’s feed clean!

This is because doing that means that are moving ink in both directions through the feed, and (in comparison to the rate at which it flows while you are writing), you are moving it fairly rapidly.

This helps to prevent any ink from drying-out inside the feed, and/or deposits potentially building-up inside the feed’s channels/fins, and thereby restricting ink flow.

 

The converter is also a brilliant tool if you wish to flush/clean-out your pen thoroughly, e.g. when changing types/colours of inks.

This is particularly true for pens like the Duofold, whose nib/feed assembly is not as easy to remove as the nib/feed unit of e.g. a Pelikan piston-fill pen, or a Parker Sonnet. Those pens’ nib/feed units can be unscrewed manually.

 

For clarity: you don’t need to ‘obsessively’ clean-out your pen all the time, let alone dismantle it to do so!
You might want to just run cold tap water into the top of its grip section to ‘flush’ or ‘rinse’ it, once every few months. This is what manufacturers used to recommend for pens in continual use.

OK, I flush my pens every time they run out of ink.
But that is because I like to ‘rotate’ between my various different pens, and between different colours (& types) of inks.

I use dye-based inks, acidic inks, alkaline inks, very-acidic iron-gall inks, and I use some pigment-based inks.
Several of these different types of inks do not ‘play nice’ with each other!

 

Not only does any individual pen that I own therefore tend to sit unused for months at a time, but I want (or rather, I need) to avoid the prospect of any chemical reactions occurring inside any one of my pens between any residue from its last fill of ink, and whatever I eventually put into it next time.

 

[BamaAl]

Last weekend I got to try a Kaweco sport for the first time.  Just one sentence written with it mind you.  I liked it so much I came home and ordered two of them.  One medium and one broad.  The broad was a mistake.  It was supposed to be a fine but I screwed up when I placed the order.  But it sure was a lucky mistake.  I’d been wanting my first broad anyway.  🤣

 

These things write like a dream!  As good or better than some rather expensive pens.

[deuter]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

If I were you I would buy bottled inks, and use the converter that came with your pen.

 

Why?
Because:

• ink bought in bottles costs only about 1/5-to-1/4 of the price of the same amount of ink bought in cartridges;
• buying ink in bottles frees you from ‘vendor lock-in’;
• it enables you to use far more colours/types of inks than the now rather-limited range that Parker still makes;

 

Also, and perhaps even more importantly:

• filling your pen by ‘sucking ink up’ with the converter actually helps to keep your pen’s feed clean!

This is because doing that means that are moving ink in both directions through the feed, and (in comparison to the rate at which it flows while you are writing), you are moving it fairly rapidly.

This helps to prevent any ink from drying-out inside the feed, and/or deposits potentially building-up inside the feed’s channels/fins, and thereby restricting ink flow.

 

The converter is also a brilliant tool if you wish to flush/clean-out your pen thoroughly, e.g. when changing types/colours of inks.

This is particularly true for pens like the Duofold, whose nib/feed assembly is not as easy to remove as the nib/feed unit of e.g. a Pelikan piston-fill pen, or a Parker Sonnet. Those pens’ nib/feed units can be unscrewed manually.

 

For clarity: you don’t need to ‘obsessively’ clean-out your pen all the time, let alone dismantle it to do so!
You might want to just run cold tap water into the top of its grip section to ‘flush’ or ‘rinse’ it, once every few months. This is what manufacturers used to recommend for pens in continual use.

OK, I flush my pens every time they run out of ink.
But that is because I like to ‘rotate’ between my various different pens, and between different colours (& types) of inks.

I use dye-based inks, acidic inks, alkaline inks, very-acidic iron-gall inks, and I use some pigment-based inks.
Several of these different types of inks do not ‘play nice’ with each other!

 

Not only does any individual pen that I own therefore tend to sit unused for months at a time, but I want (or rather, I need) to avoid the prospect of any chemical reactions occurring inside any one of my pens between any residue from its last fill of ink, and whatever I eventually put into it next time.

 

That's true, I only used the cartridge because I'am still waiting on various ink bottles I have ordered online.

I definitely look forward to using interesting ink colours  but for now the cartridge will suffice.

Thanks for your in depth advise and recommendation.

 

[deuter]

13 hours ago, Gloucesterman said:

Thank you for posting the unboxing.

Really interesting scrollwork on the nib. Would love to see a close-up if/when you have the time.

Here it is!

 

[Gloucesterman]

23 minutes ago, deuter said:

Here it is!

 

Thank YOU and it looks great. I grabbed a screen shot and enlarged it in "Paint" so that I could see it more clearly. Really nice!

Wishing you lots of enjoyment with this pen and nib.

[Misfit]

6 hours ago, BamaAl said:

Last weekend I got to try a Kaweco sport for the first time.  Just one sentence written with it mind you.  I liked it so much I came home and ordered two of them.  One medium and one broad.  The broad was a mistake.  It was supposed to be a fine but I screwed up when I placed the order.  But it sure was a lucky mistake.  I’d been wanting my first broad anyway.  🤣

 

These things write like a dream!  As good or better than some rather expensive pens.

I had thirteen Kaweco Sport fountain pens with only the stonewashed blue as a metal pen. Then I got the Frosted Natural Coconut, put a black clip on it, and that opened the buying spree of both plastic and AL Sport pens. 
 

Is the top pen of yours the Raw Aluminum? If so, I have that one and the Brass Sport. I sometimes buy them on amazon, and don’t get much in nib choices. I almost bought the AL Rose Gold today, but managed to resist for now. 

[Armo]

I came across this on fleabay, it has a Rupp nib and is a button filler. The nib is stainless and has none of the logos usually associated with Rupp (maybe because its not gold?). I don't think the clip is original.

 

 

 

Nib reads 'Rupp Punkt Iridium Feder' which translates as Rupp iridium point feather. I like that nib translates to feather in so many languages.

[Beechwood]

The celluloid looks similar to a Perfecto Lyx.

[carola]

I think I have also seen Rusewe pens with that material.

 

And that "feather" translation is just logical. In German it can designate either the nib or the whole fountain pen.

[JonSzanto]

Not an uncommon style for 40s or so era celluloid. Here's a Moore in an interesting model, and they had the striated celluloid in silver/grey, brown, and a brown/copper mix.

 

[Misfit]

@JonSzanto wow, another gorgeous Moore pen. The clear grip is an interesting addition to the look. 

[Gloucesterman]

Waterman Edson, green with a fine point and the original converter.

Actually only semi-impulsive acquisition as I have considered this one of my grail pens for quite a while.

happily traded three other pens of less interest for the Edson.

[Mercian]

6 hours ago, carola said:

And that "feather" translation is just logical.

I agree!

 

The English word ‘nib’ is related to words for the ‘beak’ or ‘bill’ of a bird, which words also get used colloquially for ‘nose’.
It seems to have developed because the shape of the cut end of a quill used for writing slightly resembles the shape of the end of the bill of a goose or swan or duck.

 

English is the unattributable child of many fathers.
This often means that it is capable of expressing fine variations in meaning that other languages simply cannot*, but its jumbled-up heritage also makes its spelling conventions a ludicrously-idiosyncratic nightmare, and make it - in many ways - a Silly language!

🤪

 

* E.g. whereas English has ‘brain’ available for the grey ‘hardware’ and ‘mind’ available for the ‘software’, French has only cerbeau, a word for the ‘hardware’, and no separate word for the ‘software’.

[ParramattaPaul]

6 minutes ago, Mercian said:

 

English is the unattributable child of many fathers.

Are you insinuating that our ancestral Celtic mothers 'slept around'?

[Mercian]

51 minutes ago, ParramattaPaul said:

Are you insinuating that our ancestral Celtic mothers 'slept around'?

Well, English has Celtic, Brithonic, Latin, Old German, Danish/Old Norse, Norman French, Dutch, middle German, and now Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Patois elements. There are undoubtedly some others that I’ve forgotten. The odd smatterings of Persian and Greek and Arabic for example.

 

I reckon it ain’t just our Celtic maternal lines that were, er, happy to give a warm welcome to (& learn enjoyable tricks from) exciting new tongues….

[JonSzanto]

3 hours ago, Misfit said:

@JonSzanto wow, another gorgeous Moore pen. The clear grip is an interesting addition to the look. 

Thanks! It is possibly misleading, as I’m not certain it was meant to be entirely transparent. A few pens companies back then had similar sections: the front grip area was painted black, leaving a clear ink window on the rear portion.

 

1 hour ago, Gloucesterman said:

Waterman Edson, green with a fine point and the original converter.

Actually only semi-impulsive acquisition as I have considered this one of my grail pens for quite a while.

Congratulations, that’s an iconic pen.

[Gloucesterman]

18 minutes ago, JonSzanto said:

Thanks! It is possibly misleading, as I’m not certain it was meant to be entirely transparent. A few pens companies back then had similar sections: the front grip area was painted black, leaving a clear ink window on the rear portion.

 

Congratulations, that’s an iconic pen.

Thank you. I was a bit surprised when I first held and used it. It was expected to be fairly heavy and it was not (un-posted, at least. And it writes quite smoothly too.

[carola]

9 hours ago, Mercian said:

This often means that it is capable of expressing fine variations in meaning that other languages simply cannot*, but its jumbled-up heritage also makes its spelling conventions a ludicrously-idiosyncratic nightmare, and make it - in many ways - a Silly language!

🤪

 

* E.g. whereas English has ‘brain’ available for the grey ‘hardware’ and ‘mind’ available for the ‘software’, French has only cerbeau, a word for the ‘hardware’, and no separate word for the ‘software’.

 

I don't know if I would agree there...

 

French "cerveau" (not cerbeau) for the hardware - yes. The mind could be nicely translated with "esprit". Or "compréhension" if the meaning goes into the direction of understanding.

German: "Gehirn" for the hardware and "Geist" (like esprit) or "Verstand" (like compréhension).

I doubt that there are many languages where you can't differentiate between the hardware and the software.

[Mercian]

3 hours ago, carola said:

French "cerveau" (not cerbeau) for the hardware - yes. The mind could be nicely translated with "esprit". Or "compréhension" if the meaning goes into the direction of understanding.

German: "Gehirn" for the hardware and "Geist" (like esprit) or "Verstand" (like compréhension).

I doubt that there are many languages where you can't differentiate between the hardware and the software.

I’m minded to agree with most of what you wrote there (especially your final sentence, which is unquestionably true), but ‘mind’ in English seems to me to be a more versatile/slippery/mutable beast than those French words. It can function as a distinct noun, but also as different verbs, and it is the root of at least one other one. Another example of English being confusingly ambiguous!

E.g.s ‘esprit’ reminds me more of ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ for more-direct equivalents, and ‘compréhension’ has of course been stolen by entered English as ‘comprehension’ (in my mind’s eye, I see English lurking in dark alleyways for other languages to pass by, so that it can knock them out and then rifle through their pockets for shiny new words).

 

Then again I, sadly, am hardly a great linguist - I am shamingly monoglottal 😔 - so perhaps you shouldn’t pay me any mind.

Also, thank you for correcting my spelling of ‘cerveau’ - I have, for years, stupidly mixed it up with ‘cerebellum’ 🤪
I’ve never minded being gently reminded of my errors, and I appreciate being alerted to holes in my learning. As they say on the London Underground, ‘mind the gap!’ 😉

 

My silly word-games aside, I do also acknowledge that English is also incapable of expressing some subtleties that other languages are better-equipped to illustrate.
E.g. its general lack of grammatical ‘gender’ means that it is deficient in comparison to ‘gendered’ languages when it comes to poetic capacity.

Taking French for comparison again, ‘la Mer’ has much more poetic resonance and potential than does ‘the Sea’.
(And why do we English tend to refer any individual boat as ‘she’, when in French it would be ‘le bateau’?)

[TSherbs]

 

51 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Taking French for comparison again, ‘la Mer’ has much more poetic resonance and potential than does ‘the Sea’.
(And why do we English tend to refer any individual boat as ‘she’, when in French it would be ‘le bateau’?)

 

I think that you are just expressing your own bias/preference here, and not an actual measurement of some sort of quality(ies) you label "poetic resonance and potential." I am unclear how a reference to gender with so many genderized articles and nouns would be an increase in anything except, well, references to gender and excess of personification. (and I am not referring to the sounds of words and phrases, that is a whole different matter).

 

The answer to your question in the parentheses is easy to look up in a search, and has little to do with the gender of cognates or borrowings from other languages. And the word "boat," in English, likely derives not from the French, but alongside the French, from earlier Germanic roots and PIE.