What pen(s) are you using today?

[flodoc]

8 hours ago, AoKiu said:

... and the first of my 5 Harmony Celluloid pens to disintegrate!

I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience with celluloid. I haven't experienced that yet. I store my pens in pen cases that are never exposed to direct sunlight or excessive heat or cold (basement office). I have never had any issues with celluloid pens deteriorating over time. Stipula, Montegrappa, Visconti and Tibaldi pens from the 80s and 90s are the ones I own.

[A Smug Dill]

I'm using a Platinum #3776 Celluloid ‘Midnight Ocean’ with a M nib today. More accurately, I'm trying to make it work sufficiently well for me, so that I'd actually write with it. It wrote smoothly — more so than I'd expect from a Platinum 14K gold nib, having used many finer ones — out-of-the-box (after over 12 months of being occasionally handled but remained unsold in the bricks-and-mortar store from which I got it two weeks ago), but I didn't like how broad and wet the lines were.

 

I didn't want to put an iron-gall ink in it, on account of the Platinum #3776 Celluloid pens not having such effective cap sealing, in my experience; but I only had marginal success in making the pen's ink flow drier through mechanically manipulating the nib and reducing the apparent line widths by ~10%, and that resulted in some occasional clickety-clicking when I wrote with it, even though the tines appeared aligned when inspected under a loupe.

 

Pulling the nib and feed out of the gripping section was surprisingly easy, but on inspection of the naked nib there seems no easy way to make its tine gap narrower, when the slit is cut almost light a thin, triangular wedge. Users who prefer wet-writing pens would probably like that; but I'm not so pleased by it. After failing to make the tine gap narrower, I cleaned and reinstalled the nib and feed, making sure the nib tips were perfectly aligned at rest. It was a disaster when I next wrote with the pen, probably due to some remnant of dishwashing liquid in the feed; it was gushing seemingly diluted ink on the page that then feathered and bled through the paper like there is no tomorrow. Out came everything again for flushing and cleaning…

 

Once I got everything back to normal, any previous gains in tighter control over the the line width were lost; and the outlines of the ink marks seemed woollier, probably because it was 5AM by then, my wrist was tired after the all-nighter and threatening another flare-up of tendonitis, and I was trying too hard to write with zero downward pressure to constrain the line width, such that the nib tipping kept breaking contact with the paper surface.

 

Still working on it…

 

Edit: Somewhat usable now, but I don't think I'll ever enjoy using it as much as I do pens with finer nibs.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by A Smug Dill

[flodoc]

Parker Premier Athenes w/18K medium nib and Private Reserve Naples Blue ink.

[sappie66]

18 hours ago, DvdRiet said:

 

That's a mighty fine Valentine's Day gift! Congratulation! 

Thank you!  Well, it was the day before Valentine's Day and I was with her and looking at pens.  I was testing out the soft-fine nib and liked it, and when I decided to buy it, she piped up and said that she would buy it for me for Valentine's Day.  So that worked out well! 😃

[sappie66]

17 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Very nice pen, @sappie66. It matches also the Visconti Homo Sapiens I think I saw in tbe background. Someone really appreciates you! 😄

Yes, thank you!  She's a good catch.

[OldTravelingShoe]

I wanted to try a Ranga pen for quite a bit (relatively to the duration of my rediscovery of fountain pens). Thanks to the FPN group sale organized by owner @mpkandan here on FPN, I was able to do this with a Ranga Splendour. (This means I also got to try a truly large pen, which was another item on my want-to list.)

 

I am very happy I did try this pen. I am still under the very positive impression of this first try, so I will just say I like everything about it. Most importantly, it offers a writing experience different from all my other pens. The weight and girth of this pen give it a very pleasant tactile feeling, I like very much the visual presence, and the Bock BB nib is (to me) surprising and capable. 

 

I inked it with Diamine Earl Gray, a gray ink with nice shading properties I associate with celebrating online fountain pen networks, and I like how things went from there. Figure 1 summarizes this experience. There's shading, line variation, reverse writing... and you can also see a writing sample that qualifies me as a very early starter, pre-calligraphy 😄 (Also, there's at least one typo.) 

 

Should you want to see how this Splendour compares in size with other pens, Figure 2 illustrates the differences. 

 

TL:DR: I like very much the Ranga Splendour Peak. Many thanks indeed, @mpkandan Sir! 

 

P.S.: Thanks to @Chi for teaching me how to use the Image Gallery. I was wondering if I'm going to run out of image space right about now. 

 

Figure 1. Writing sample with the Ranga Splendour Peak, inked with Diamine "FPN" Earl Gray. 

 

Figure 2. Size comparison between the Ranga Splendour Peak pen and eight others. The pens are: (1)Ranga Splendour, ~18cm capped, (2) Ranga Oliver Exam, (3) Lamy Joy, (4) Pilot VP / Capless, (5) Lamy Safari, (6) Platinum #3776C, (7) Platinum Preppy, (8) Pilot E95S, (9) Kaweco Sport. 

[sansenri]

very nice! I have one of these in the works at Ranga too! Beautiful ebonite.

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 minute ago, sansenri said:

very nice! I have one of these in the works at Ranga too! Beautiful ebonite.

Wonderful! It's very nice to meet fellow 'explorers'. Nice to meet you, @sansenri!

 

P.S.: Many thanks for your photos and comments, I've just discovered I'm one of the silent group that sees (and appreciates) them.

[Valparaiso_Ed]

I forgot in my first response that I also use a Libelle Spanish Eyes pen with Levenger's Amethyst ink when I need to contrast a text in something I am writing in a different color.

[sansenri]

2 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Wonderful! It's very nice to meet fellow 'explorers'. Nice to meet you, @sansenri!

 

P.S.: Many thanks for your photos and comments, I've just discovered I'm one of the silent group that sees (and appreciates) them.

thanks, I admit being a fan of Ranga pens. And ebonite is a really nice material to handle.

 

BTW do you recall which ebonite you choose for your Splendour, it has turned out a very nice dark purple, I don't think I have this colour, yet...

[flodoc]

Ancora Perla in pearlescent yellow acrylic and vermeil trim w/18K fine Bexley nib and Pelikan black ink. Vermeil is gold plated sterling silver.

[OldTravelingShoe]

9 hours ago, sansenri said:

BTW do you recall which ebonite you choose for your Splendour, it has turned out a very nice dark purple, I don't think I have this colour, yet...

I chose P19. Blue / Orange in Premium Ebonite. Hope you can still get it. 

[A Smug Dill]

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

Very nice collection, thank you for sharing! Try-out day? 

 

Just in case you want to share your thoughts on this, I'm curious in particular about Pens 3 and 4, of which in particular Pen 3 I've not seen before. So, about both: how do they write for you?

 

(I'm also curious how you experienced Pen 4, the Hongdian N6. I thought about trying it and then for some reason did not pursue.) 

[AmandaW]

Discovering yesterday (while making myself a "Currently Inked" book) that I have 62 pens inked has me on a campaign to write them empty before I'm inking anything else! Today I chose three that are fairly low to get off to a flying start... A Pilot 78G with a B Italic nib filled with Iroshizuku Syo-ro, a Wing Sung 699 with Diamine Deep Dark Brown and a leaky PenBBS 323 with an undocumented brown ink.

 

[A Smug Dill]

13 hours ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

Very nice collection, thank you for sharing! Try-out day? 

 

Thanks. Not a try-out day per se; I wanted to write up a colour-coded list that required four or five colours (including at least red, green, grey, and a ‘neutral’ standard colour such as black or blue), so I just grabbed a few pens that were inked. Only the Pelikan M205 was freshly inked; I've had it for few months, but didn't have a real need to write in grey until now. Unfortunately, its factory-fitted EF nib came with a round glob of tipping, so I had to spend way too much time grinding down the tipping (poorly) to make it even remotely useful to me. The nib also seems predisposed towards ample ink flow due a wide tine gap that I cannot close, and the grey inks I chose/tried on account of their water resistance all seem to be of no help when it comes to constraining the line width.

 

The red Sailor Koshu-Inden pen with red ink was brought out from storage and thus filled for Chinese New Year almost three weeks ago. The Koshu-Inden pens only come factory-fitted with 14K gold H-MF nibs, of the same type that goes into Profit Standard and Professional Gear Slim models; the section now fitted on the red Koshu-Inden was originally from my Sailor Kabazaiku pen, a model that only comes factory-fitted with H-M nibs. I really like the feel of the deerskin and the heft due the brass core underneath it, so much so that, once I tried the pen for the first time, I just had to get the black Koshu-Inden Sayagata pen as well despite not being able offered as good a discount. Alas, even though I enjoy writing with them — and their H-MF nibs are certainly fine enough for my general writing use — I tend not to keep them inked once one fill has been used up or completely dried out, because the Sailor pen models of that mould don't seal as well as their resin-bodied cousins, in my experience. The H-M nib is quite versatile in delivering a fair range of line widths, in spite of not being a Zoom nib or specialty nib, and is a lot nicer to use than the M nib on the Platinum #3776.

 

The HongDian N6 came in with the two model A3 pens I recently ordered from the official HongDian store on AliExpress. It really isn't my preferred style of pen, but I thought the Chinese hanzi radicals in shallow sunk-relief on the metal cap is cute, and a factory-fitted ebonite feed on a Chinese is a novelty. It has the same type of nib as on the model N1-S, from what I can see; but while the N1-S has a readily removable screw-in nib unit, it isn't the case with the N6. (The N6 looks like there is a threaded nib housing embedded in the gripping section, but it won't screw out, even after I've soaked its business end in 45°C water for ten minutes to soften any glue that may have been applied to the threads.) The EF nib, unlike that on my other model A3 pen, writes more like a Medium-Fine (or Fine-Medium).

 

The N6's body is fatter and quite hefty, and comfortable to hold in my hand, although I don't generally prefer girthy pens; but the piston knob is flimsy, ‘cheaply’ constructed, and just feels awful. I don't mind that the pen is more front-heavy because of that; but I think the N1-S is the better pen (and cheaper to boot), and it hasn't needed an ebonite feed to perform adequately. I haven't confirmed whether it is possible to just pull out the nib and ebonite feed from the N6 and transplant them into an N1-S. The store is supposedly sending me a replacement N6, while letting me keep this one which has a minor problem; I might try the feed swap with one of my N1-S pens if and when that arrives.

[DvdRiet]

1 hour ago, AmandaW said:

Discovering yesterday (while making myself a "Currently Inked" book) that I have 62 pens inked has me on a campaign to write them empty before I'm inking anything else!

 

Whoa! 62?!?

I scared myself when I realized I had just 30! (I've since brought it back down to the 20 that fit in my display case and that's now my current rotation limit!  )

[OldTravelingShoe]

4 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

but the piston knob is flimsy,‘cheaply’ constructed, and just feels awful

 

4 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

the N1-S is the better pen (and cheaper to boot

Thank you, @A Smug Dill, this is as conclusive as it gets for me.

 

I also appreciate the other, technical parts of your review. 

[OldTravelingShoe]

4 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

The red Sailor Koshu-Inden pen with red ink was brought out from storage and thus filled for Chinese New Year almost three weeks ago. The Koshu-Inden pens only come factory-fitted with 14K gold H-MF nibs, of the same type that goes into Profit Standard and Professional Gear Slim models; the section now fitted on the red Koshu-Inden was originally from my Sailor Kabazaiku pen, a model that only comes factory-fitted with H-M nibs

And this is how I'm learning about two great-looking pens. Excellent technical detail as well. 

 

I like very much the Koshu Inden in red fabric (is it really leather?) I believe @Chi is currently selling a vintage precursor from one of the Big Three, in textured fabric, which also looks amazing.

 

Many thanks, @A Smug Dill! 

[OldTravelingShoe]

3 hours ago, DvdRiet said:

62?!?

I scared myself when I realized I had just 30!

Hehe. 62 inked! I'm starting to understand where I'll be going next with this hobby. 😄