Your Most Recent Impulsive Ink Purchase? (Replacement Bottles Don't Count.. Only 1St Timers!)

[RJS]

Best wishes, Bo Bo!

[Penguincollector]

Hope you’re doing well, @Bo Bo Olson!

[Penguincollector]

   I bought 2 Ostrich inks, Lake Baikal, Glen the Sea and 2 Chinese gold shimmer inks. 

[Misfit]

I got my first bottle of a Lamy Crystal ink yesterday. It is Topaz, and it was bought at a store called Scrapbook Memories.  It’s south of where I live. 

[A Smug Dill]

12 minutes ago, Misfit said:

I got my first bottle of a Lamy Crystal ink yesterday. It is Topaz,

 

Ah. That ink has damaged/destroyed more of my fountain pens than any other ink. Wishing you the best of luck with it!

[Bo Bo Olson]

Diamine; this week.

Arctic Blue which shades well  on all of my papers.

Kensington Blue, shades somewhat on half of my good to best papers.

Ultra Green, shades  a little on 2 1/2 of my 7 papers tested.

Chocolate Brown.....the same.

Majestic Purple shaded not at all.

China Blue some to little, on only the best papers.

The only Shade Monster was the glitter Arctic Blue..unfortunately a tilt for glitter ink.

[Misfit]

21 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Ah. That ink has damaged/destroyed more of my fountain pens than any other ink. Wishing you the best of luck with it!

Oh my… that’s disappointing. I put it in a TWSBI Eco, so it’s a lot of ink in one pen. 

[RJS]

3 hours ago, Misfit said:

Oh my… that’s disappointing. I put it in a TWSBI Eco, so it’s a lot of ink in one pen. 

I bought it when Amazon were selling it off for £1.99... I've not filled from it yet. I also wasn't aware it had a pen destroying reputation 😮

 

I've never permanently ruined a pen so far... though I've lost a few converters to staining, a few to failed pistons, and a couple to corrosion of the metal agitators.

[kestrel]

I promised myself six months ago that I wouldn't buy any more ink.  I have enough on hand to float an aircraft carrier but there was this deal on an auction site.  Three NOS bottles of Edelstein inks going relatively cheap because they lacked boxes.  I don't need no stinking boxes so toward the end of this week I will receive bottles of Ruby, Sapphire, and Aquamarine.  It will be a fun weekend.

[inkstainedruth]

On 6/8/2024 at 2:01 AM, A Smug Dill said:

 

Ah. That ink has damaged/destroyed more of my fountain pens than any other ink. Wishing you the best of luck with it!

Destroyed them how?  Staining barrels, eating sacs, what?  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

10 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

Destroyed them how?

 

Either cementing the nib collar's exterior to the interior wall of the grip section, or perhaps even causing the two to fuse somewhat, thus the nib unit could not be unscrewed without something breaking. (Yes, I've already tried long soaking in lukewarm water, and running through several cycles in an ultrasonic cleaner.)

 

I'm really sore that it killed one of my Delike Alpha pens with a pretty, but thin, acrylic body that way. Part of the grip section broke, when I finally managed to remove the nib unit from it. That pen cost me ~$30, but more relevantly is “irreplaceable” in that it has apparently been discontinued.

 

It also destroyed a Moonman M6 in the same way, but I couldn't care (much) less about that.

[Bo Bo Olson]

7 hours ago, kestrel said:

Sapphire

I found that to be an ok blue ink....but when it first came out, it was disliked on FPN because it was not Parker Penman Sapphire.

I got mine rather late (last year), somehow having money in my B&M...and it was there.

.............

I'm 'not into' blue inks...................yet the day before yesterday, for some reason I counted 19 of them...could be 20, not counting my 6 or so BB's.

That was a surprise.

[kestrel]

15 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

I found that to be an ok blue ink....but when it first came out, it was disliked on FPN because it was not Parker Penman Sapphire.

I got mine rather late (last year), somehow having money in my B&M...and it was there.

.............

I'm 'not into' blue inks...................yet the day before yesterday, for some reason I counted 19 of them...could be 20, not counting my 6 or so BB's.

That was a surprise.

I will find out this weekend.  It will go into a 1950ish 400 with a nice soft medium left oblique nib that I took a chance on because you were always raving about the superior nibs on vintage Pelikans.  You were right about the nibs. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

11 hours ago, kestrel said:

You were right about the nibs. 

I was a semi-flex snob for such a long time before I 'discovered' the dryer regular flex/Japanese 'soft', does better for shading.

Kestrel has read this coming advice, many times....but there is bound to be someone that didn't.

 

Factory stubbed, Semi-flex has that natural line variation, where one needs do nothing but write normal.....unless one is cursed with a very light Hand. 

Semi-flex and Maxi-semi-flex nibs are natural flair nibs, not calligraphy nibs.

If one finds one's self writing slow with semi-flex nibs, one is trying to make the nib do something it is not designed to do...so are practicing Nib Abuse.

 

I just scribble along just as if the nib was a nail.....well occasionally I fancy up a descender, or the start letter of a Paragraph....like the last green moon.

.................................

In today's era of super cheap superflex nibbed pens, there is no excuse to try to do calligraphy with a nib that  only does 3X vs a light down stroke....unless springing the nib is a well thought out option.

 

Pelikan, MB, Soennecken, Kaweco, Osmia, Geha and some of the lesser or no name factory stubbed semi-flex are worth having at least one....in they are fun with out doing anything, (not Lamy (nail)/Artis (regular flex) or nail Herlitz) and they like the '80-90's era of tear drop tipping, write with a very clean line.

 

I often see woolly lines on close ups of writing examples in Ink Reviews, that are thought to be normal.........I don't care for woolly lines, or even slightly fuzzy..................but I got spoiled by semi-flex nibs, clean lines.

[fireant]

16 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

I was a semi-flex snob for such a long time before I 'discovered' the dryer regular flex/Japanese 'soft', does better for shading.

 

I had no idea. I have a Pilot Soft Medium. I am not crazy about it, looks like I need to try a shading ink in it.

[Stompie]

First bottle of Waterman ink - Intense Black.

 

It really flows well to the point where it might be a little to easy flowing, but it is nice.

 

Quite surprised me that it was my only ever bottle of Waterman ink.

[Bo Bo Olson]

12 hours ago, fireant said:

I had no idea.

It's fun to learn here, there are no tests.

I'm still learning about papers, and just when I thought I knew inks....someone rang a real big bell, telling me I didn't know much at all. Sheen inks came in and I can't make sheen inks sheen on good to better papers. Glitter is less than I can see with out tilting. 

............

I have a lot of Pelikan 200's or similar, 150/1, Celebries, 381, or other '82-97 era 400-600-800 pens. All of them are tear drop tipped regular flex nibs. Those semi-vintage and factory vintage stubs give a nice clean line.

Double ball Pelikan nibs don't.

 

As far as i can tell the well made steel nibs are as good as the gold ones.

There is a myth that gold nibs are softer than steel.

I think someone compared a steel nail with a gold semi-nail, and it can't be erased from urban rumor. 

Osmia/Degussa made grand steel nibs that matched their grand gold nibs..............I was a bit ignorant, and a gold snob, so passed up affordable steel nibbed Osmia pens....and they don't have a size 19 boot 'smilie', here on the com.

Eventually I learned the semi and or maxi-semi-flex Osmia nibs are fantastic. (One might have to get a new gasket or a new rubber sack, but those are antique pens).

This is a late '30's push button rubber sac pen.

I can't find the picture of it in the live auction lot, it was in....missing clip, someone had not gotten the pen back together completely from trying to put a sac in and it needed more than a bit of polish. It had a very nice nib... Francis (Fountaible on the com) fixed it up for me. Cork gasket. It is one of my little darlings.

Finally found the live auction picture of the top pen.

 

Below the pen that started me into this pen addiction.

Early '50's maxi-semi-flex steel nib. 1938-55 Plastic Gasket 1.0 was used and they wear out...In '56 Plastic Gasket 2.0 started use...still used today. Very stable gasket.

The pen died on me rather soon, and as noobie I just thought it was one of those wet juicy nibs, noobies wanted. It was much later I found out it was a maxi-semi-flex...which being hamfisted gave me that wet juicy line.

 

The Pelikan steel and gold of the '82-97 era are nice springy regular flex/Japanese 'soft' nibs. A nice comfortable ride. Unless one is in the middle of hamfisted pretzeling a nib, there is not much line variation...which starts with semi-flex.

 

Pelikan makes the very dry 4001 inks and made their nibs to be wet to meet in the middle..............one can expect Pelikan to be a very wet nib, when using wetter inks......some not knowing that complained bitterly when using a Pelikan in their well liked sopping wet inks.

Waterman made 'wet' inks, so had thinner than other's nibs ie drier, to meet again in the middle.Once Waterman made the second thinnest nib in the west, Aurora the thinnest.

 

Then the Japanese pens stopped being a far east nitch pen under 20 years ago, by pricing the Metropolitan at such a low price one had to have one.... A long time ago, in the states for business, I almost got one my self, but all they had was F-EF and I was a wide nib guy.

 

Japanese nibs are narrower by one size to Western nibs, in they are made for a real small printed Japanese script.

Western nibs are made for cursive writing, so are wider.

 

Those who start with Japanese pens, will always think western nibs as fat.

Those of us who started with western nibs.....know.....Japanese nibs are miss marked one size too narrow.

Their M=western F, F= western EF, and EF = baby spiderweb width.

As you can tell I'm not heavy into narrow nibs.

[grayautumnday]

On 3/11/2024 at 11:00 AM, XYZZY said:

Yesterday I was passing through the Seattle neighborhood with Kinokuniya, so I stopped by to ogle the paper.  After realizing I needed to have my parking validated with a purchase I ended up walking out with a bottle of Sailor Manyo Koke.  Of course, it would have been cheaper to not buy anything and pay for parking.  And I have too many pens inked at the moment so it'll be a while until I open the bottle.  If you're ever there they do have a hand-made notebook of writing samples and swabs of all of the inks that they carry.

 

I did, however, resist paying $45 for a SakaeTP Tomoe River S notebook.

Please tell me what shop was that? I live in North Seattle and I'm trying to figure out which shops keep the best selection of actual pen inks on hand. ArtistCraftsman is almost all dip pen shellacs.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I just had two cataract operations, so couldn't see into the section of a Fend fountain pen, that was missing the spike. I took it to my B&M here in Germany, and he agreed the spike was missing. He didn't know Fend was a German brand.

While there in spite of me having my troubles with glitter inks outside of Diamine Arctic Blue...a great shading glitter ink....knew there was something I was to do there...having forgotten the newest 200, got that Golden Lapis, even with my doubts.

 

Claes, helped me out.

 

I got out my BB semi-flex Osmia black and gold small 52 fountain pen.

Golden Lapis settles back out quickly....so instead of filling from the top like I had with my other Diamine glitter inks, waited that five seconds for the glitter to start to settle again, and filled from the deep, and got the golden sands everyone shows so often.

 

The memo fill from the bottom for more glitter got lost .... must have been on a post it.

So by filling from the bottom, I got the golden sands everyone had.

 

I will now revisit my other 4 Diamine glitter inks, and shake, see how long it takes foe them to start settling (Golden Lapis settles very fast)...I will shake and fill from the bottom, as the glitter starts to settle.

[XYZZY]

On 6/16/2024 at 9:27 PM, grayautumnday said:

Please tell me what shop was that? I live in North Seattle and I'm trying to figure out which shops keep the best selection of actual pen inks on hand. ArtistCraftsman is almost all dip pen shellacs.

The name of the shop was there in the pieces that you quoted. Kinokuniya. It’s in the building with Uwajimaya, the big Japanese grocery store.

 

Kinokuniya has a large selection of Japanese books. And since stationery and pens. Upstairs lots of figurines.
 

Prices are generally MSRP, so if you’re looking for pens or ink then go there for instant gratification and not for a good deal.  Or go there to fondle the paper😀

 

University Bookstore has a few pens and inks. Think Lamy Safari and Pilot Metropolitan, maybe some slightly more expensive models, but the selection is small. You used to be able to get MB pens there with a nicely done school logo on it (yes, a 149 with a big purple W😜), but they’ve stopped that.  In other words, focused on pedestrian student pens and not graduation gifts.  And maybe some Noodlers and Herbin inks.  Notebooks from Rhodia, Leuchtturm, etc.  If I’m meeting somebody in the U District I’ll probably park at the bookstore and buy a trinket there.