Fp Is Kind Of A Rocket Science

December 6, 2017

Hi,Vanessaa! Welcome here.

As I am from Austria, you could call us neighbours. ;-)

Concerning vintage fountain pens - have you tried Wiener Füllfeder Werkstätte in Vienna? I have already found some nice vintage pens there and he does professional restoring as well. He specializes in pens before... umm... I think 1950 (or was it 1960? In any case, he won't touch a pen much newer than that.), is a very nice guy, has patiently answered all of my questions so far (up to now, I have spent several hours in his shop and exchanged a multitude of e-mails with him) and he has also restored some pens for me to my ample satisfaction.

December 22, 2017

Hi Vanessa,

I would definitely recommend to go for the Pilot Falcon instead of the Noodlers. While I personally haven't tried Noodlers, there are lots of complains from people having issues with it, the topic comes up often on FPN. On the other hand Pilot (and Japanese manufacturers in general) have a good reputation for their quality. (I personally only have a Pilot Elite 95S which is a great writer.)

About flexibility:

Yes, a "soft" or "semiflex" will give you some nice line variation which you can use to make your handwriting cooler. But if you want to get into serious calligraphy, I would definitely recommend a gold flex nib which is advertised for this purpose. Those "soft" nibs are not exactly meant for this and could break, bend of wear out if you push them too hard. Those youtube videos push these to the limits.