What pen(s) are you using today?

[pan101]

Today's pen is a Jinhao 100 with #6 fude/bent nib and Diamine teal ink. First outing for this pen and I'm a long way from being able to write with it.

[Particular_Song3539]

@A Smug Dill wow, such beautiful set up, thank you for sharing.
For a brief moment, I thought that Sailor 670 ink looked gold. I think I need to look into that ink.

[Mercian]

19 hours ago, USG said:

 

So let me think about this:

What about the large amount of expensive ink that gets absorbed in the tissue wiping off the nib and feed after a fill, never mind the mess it makes?  The price of ink was never a factor in the old days but now, it's a consideration…

 

…Then there are the designers and manufacturers who came up with cartridges and the fact that there are more cartridge converter pens than any other kind.  With my recent interest in inks, I perfer converter pens for their ease of cleaning and ease of refilling withe a syringe.

 

 

With respect to the amount of ink that gets ‘wasted’ when wiping it off the nib/section after filling from a bottle, I have two comments:

1- if one wipes the nib (& section, if necessary) against the inner edge of the bottle after filling, most of that ink gets wiped back into the bottle; not wasted;

2- I estimate the proportion of ink that ends up on a tissue (rather than in the pen) per fill to be similar to the proportion of ink that remains stuck to the walls of a cartridge when one’s pen will no longer write, and so ends up in the bin with the cartridge.

 

But, for the sake of discussion, let’s pretend that no ink ever remains unusable in a cartridge when one’s pen will no longer write, and let’s consider only the relative prices of the two filling methods.

If you read the following old post…

 

 

…you will see that ink in cartridges costs much, much more than does ink in bottles.

 

That example uses Parker’s inks to make the comparison - and their cartridges are large-capacity AND have moulded longitudinal internal strakes that break-up surface tension and help to encourage all the ink to flow out into the feed. As cartridges go, they are really good.
But I buy Parker’s converters for my Parker pens, and buy my Parker ink in bottles.

 

Imagine that, rather than being ‘only’ a fountain pen user, you are an Executive at a pen/ink manufacturing company.

Looking at that calculation, do you want your customers to buy your ink in bottles?
Or do you want them to buy your ink in cartridges?
Which type of pen are you going to tell your company’s employees to design and make, and your Marketing people to advertise?

The calculation above seems to me to be the most-likely explanation for the ‘weird’ fact that the Parker website doesn’t list the company’s own converters, even though they make two types!

From the perspective of the manufacturer, making c/c pens that take proprietary cartridges also gives you the added bonus of ‘vendor lock-in’, to trap the customer in to having to buy cartridges made by your company.

One can make the same comparison calculation between the prices of any company’s ink in bottles and its ink in cartridges if one knows the capacity of their cartridges. Several old threads here discuss the capacities of various cartridges.

 

There is nothing at all wrong with preferring to use c/c pens, but the calculation from the post that I linked shows that filling through the nib from a bottle would have to waste 80% of all the ink in the bottle (i.e. four times as much ink as ends up in the converter/pen, every time that you fill the pen) before it becomes even as-expensive as is filling with cartridges.

Buying a converter doesn’t require very much ‘initial capital outlay’, it makes cleaning/flushing one’s pen easier, and it saves the customer a huge amount of money in comparison to buying ink in cartridges.

If anyone is worried about running out of ink in the day at school/university/work, they only need to remember to carry a spare cartridge.
And of course cartridges are great for use e.g. on holidays, and/or in any situation where carrying bottled ink is impractical.

 

Sure, one can (like you) use a syringe to re-fill old cartridges, but their mouths eventually wear out due to the mechanical stresses exerted as you repeatedly take them off the feed-nipple, and then push them back on again (which is a series of operations that they are not designed for).

In my experience the Parker cartridges do bear-up quite well, and will tolerate many refillings, but I have also found e.g. Pelikan’s long cartridges to be really fragile. It seems to me that those really are built to be ‘single-use’ items.

 

 

[Mercian]

2 hours ago, USG said:

My only comments are:  a 1mm loss is a lot for a 2mm sample and good luck filling from the nib in those small vials.  I never thought of using anything but a syringe or an eye dropper in the samples.

I totally agree with you about samples!

 

I have always used a syringe to get the ink out of sample vials and transfer it to my pens 

 

[Gloucesterman]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

In my experience the Parker cartridges do bear-up quite well, and will tolerate many refillings, but I have also found e.g. Pelikan’s long cartridges to be really fragile. It seems to me that those really are built to be ‘single-use’ items.

Just out of curiosity, what are your thought (and your experience) with the LAMY cartridges?

[Mangrove Jack]

On 2/11/2024 at 3:10 PM, USG said:

 

I wanted to run something by you....  I fill everything I can with a syringe or eye dropper.  I unscrew the nibs on my piston fillers and fill that way... So I was wondering, for pens that don't change ink often, if there's any advantage of filling through the nib because it flushes out the feed by moving the ink from the nib into the barrel instead of the other way around.  Just a thought.

 

Where the piston fillers are concerned, it may be a good practice to occasionally move the piston up and down to prevent it getting stuck (piston seizure) in one position.  

[Baka1969]

ROYGBIV

 

[Mercian]

6 hours ago, Gloucesterman said:

Just out of curiosity, what are your thought (and your experience) with the LAMY cartridges?

I’ve only ever re-filled one Lamy cartridge, on one occasion. The cartridge seemed to be of a similar level of robustness to my Parker cartridges.

I bought my first Lamy (a Vista) with a pack of 5 cartridges of their Turquoise ink.

I liked the colour of that ink so much that I bought a Z24 converter and a bottle of the ink.

 

Since I bought that Z24, I have always used converters in my Vista, Safaris, and now my Al-Star. I think I own four Z24/Z28s (I have seven pens that take them). I love the fact that they clip into the pens 

Their downside (for me) is their lack of any ink-agitation device, and the difficulty of inserting one into them.

I have experienced the surface-tension issue that causes ink to clump at the piston end in all of my Z24/Z28s 😕

I think that I’ve also experienced it with at least one Lamy cartridge (they don’t have the internal strakes that Parker cartridges have).

 

I’ve certainly experienced the surface-tension problem with all of my Parker ‘Deluxe’ (twist-action) converters, whereas the ‘cheap’ slide-action converters contain a ball-bearing as an agitation device. Which means that, if anyone were to buy a Duofold and use the converter that comes with it, they may find that their lovely new  ‘flagship’ pen suffers annoyingly from ink-starvation.
See also Waterman’s converters in the beautiful (& commensurately-priced) Carène.

My best Parker converter is a slide converter that came with a 1990s Vector ‘Calligraphy’ set - that converter contains a small piece of stainless steel tubing as an agitator. Unlike the ball-bearings, it never blocks the feed nipple.
I have had some, er, ‘unfortunate’ and ‘interesting’ results when vigorously flushing pens whose slide-converters’ ball-bearings had blocked the feed nipple 😁

 

I also have three types of the old Parker squeeze converters - they’ve never suffered from the surface-tension issue, but of course I cannot see how much ink is left in them.

[Gloucesterman]

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

I’ve only ever re-filled one Lamy cartridge, on one occasion. The cartridge seemed to be of a similar level of robustness to my Parker cartridges.

I bought my first Lamy (a Vista) with a pack of 5 cartridges of their Turquoise ink.

I liked the colour of that ink so much that I bought a Z24 converter and a bottle of the ink.

 

Since I bought that Z24, I have always used converters in my Vista, Safaris, and now my Al-Star. I think I own four Z24/Z28s (I have seven pens that take them). I love the fact that they clip into the pens 

Their downside (for me) is their lack of any ink-agitation device, and the difficulty of inserting one into them.

I have experienced the surface-tension issue that causes ink to clump at the piston end in all of my Z24/Z28s 😕

I think that I’ve also experienced it with at least one Lamy cartridge (they don’t have the internal strakes that Parker cartridges have).

 

I’ve certainly experienced the surface-tension problem with all of my Parker ‘Deluxe’ (twist-action) converters, whereas the ‘cheap’ slide-action converters contain a ball-bearing as an agitation device. Which means that, if anyone were to buy a Duofold and use the converter that comes with it, they may find that their lovely new  ‘flagship’ pen suffers annoyingly from ink-starvation.
See also Waterman’s converters in the beautiful (& commensurately-priced) Carène.

My best Parker converter is a slide converter that came with a 1990s Vector ‘Calligraphy’ set - that converter contains a small piece of stainless steel tubing as an agitator. Unlike the ball-bearings, it never blocks the feed nipple.
I have had some, er, ‘unfortunate’ and ‘interesting’ results when vigorously flushing pens whose slide-converters’ ball-bearings had blocked the feed nipple 😁

 

I also have three types of the old Parker squeeze converters - they’ve never suffered from the surface-tension issue, but of course I cannot see how much ink is left in them.

Thank you for the added insights.

I guess I have been lucky as I have very rarely had to deal with the ink starvation issue.

Again, thank you...

[ParramattaPaul]

7 hours ago, Mangrove Jack said:

 

Where the piston fillers are concerned, it may be a good practice to occasionally move the piston up and down to prevent it getting stuck (piston seizure) in one position.  

I have one piston filler.  It is a vintage Onoto (of course). Yes, pistons can become 'sluggish' if not used for a long time.

[ParramattaPaul]

11 hours ago, Mercian said:

I totally agree with you about samples!

 

I have always used a syringe to get the ink out of sample vials and transfer it to my pens 

 

Ah, the advantage of being a dullard with a limited taste for ink colours and brands.  I don't purchase ink samples. 

 

Admittedly, much of the colour spectrum is wasted on me since I have been diagnosed as having 'Astigmatic Chromatism'.  That's doctor talk-around for being mildly red-green colour blind when colour perception was an occupational requirement.

[inkstainedruth]

@Mercian -- A number of years ago, I had occasion to send the Parker Urban from H-E-double hockey sticks back to Parker (glad I'd paid for the extended warranty!) because I had gotten an older style squeeze converter stuck in the barrel).  I had gotten it because that was all I could find locally, after completely giving up in disgust at the slide converter which came with the pen.  Had to jump through hoops to mail it back to Janesville.  They sent it back in a blister envelope (although at least in a tube) along with a snotty note about how I'd used the "wrong" converter....  And of course another slide converter.  Since then, I've found the twist converters (which work MUCH better, BTW).  And now you're saying that converters are not even listed on Parker's website? 

Guess I'm now going to be hoarding the Parker twist converters I already have....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[jmccarty3]

Filled a black vintage Sheaffer Balance with Sheaffer Blue-Black today. The nib is an EF, and a little scratchy even after alignment. I may have someone work on it, although it's a pleasure as it is. Just not quite as smooth as my Waterman's 58 EF. The ink is perfect for this pen.

[Penguincollector]

    I just wrestled with a Con-40 to barely ink my Pilot Prera Iro-Ai. That’s for sure a syringe filler- remembered too late. Everything else has a a different Pilot converter in in it and I forgot what a PITA those are. Anyway, the ink Is Diamne Moon Dust, which is shading a treat and the shimmer really looks amazing coming out of the CM nib. The penguin that I am coloring is very shiny. 
 

  I wrote with my blue Parker 45 Arrow F for a bit, using a cartridge of Parker Permanent Blue, and swatched Scribe Indigo (on loan from a friend) with a glass nib and a Eagle Pencil Co. 830 Bulb Point.

[USG]

21 hours ago, Mercian said:

With respect to the amount of ink that gets ‘wasted’ when wiping it off the nib/section after filling from a bottle, I have two comments:

1- if one wipes the nib (& section, if necessary) against the inner edge of the bottle after filling, most of that ink gets wiped back into the bottle; not wasted;

2- I estimate the proportion of ink that ends up on a tissue (rather than in the pen) per fill to be similar to the proportion of ink that remains stuck to the walls of a cartridge when one’s pen will no longer write, and so ends up in the bin with the cartridge.

 

But, for the sake of discussion, let’s pretend that no ink ever remains unusable in a cartridge when one’s pen will no longer write, and let’s consider only the relative prices of the two filling methods.

If you read the following old post…

 

 

…you will see that ink in cartridges costs much, much more than does ink in bottles.

 

That example uses Parker’s inks to make the comparison - and their cartridges are large-capacity AND have moulded longitudinal internal strakes that break-up surface tension and help to encourage all the ink to flow out into the feed. As cartridges go, they are really good.
But I buy Parker’s converters for my Parker pens, and buy my Parker ink in bottles.

 

Imagine that, rather than being ‘only’ a fountain pen user, you are an Executive at a pen/ink manufacturing company.

Looking at that calculation, do you want your customers to buy your ink in bottles?
Or do you want them to buy your ink in cartridges?
Which type of pen are you going to tell your company’s employees to design and make, and your Marketing people to advertise?

The calculation above seems to me to be the most-likely explanation for the ‘weird’ fact that the Parker website doesn’t list the company’s own converters, even though they make two types!

From the perspective of the manufacturer, making c/c pens that take proprietary cartridges also gives you the added bonus of ‘vendor lock-in’, to trap the customer in to having to buy cartridges made by your company.

One can make the same comparison calculation between the prices of any company’s ink in bottles and its ink in cartridges if one knows the capacity of their cartridges. Several old threads here discuss the capacities of various cartridges.

 

There is nothing at all wrong with preferring to use c/c pens, but the calculation from the post that I linked shows that filling through the nib from a bottle would have to waste 80% of all the ink in the bottle (i.e. four times as much ink as ends up in the converter/pen, every time that you fill the pen) before it becomes even as-expensive as is filling with cartridges.

Buying a converter doesn’t require very much ‘initial capital outlay’, it makes cleaning/flushing one’s pen easier, and it saves the customer a huge amount of money in comparison to buying ink in cartridges.

If anyone is worried about running out of ink in the day at school/university/work, they only need to remember to carry a spare cartridge.
And of course cartridges are great for use e.g. on holidays, and/or in any situation where carrying bottled ink is impractical.

 

Sure, one can (like you) use a syringe to re-fill old cartridges, but their mouths eventually wear out due to the mechanical stresses exerted as you repeatedly take them off the feed-nipple, and then push them back on again (which is a series of operations that they are not designed for).

In my experience the Parker cartridges do bear-up quite well, and will tolerate many refillings, but I have also found e.g. Pelikan’s long cartridges to be really fragile. It seems to me that those really are built to be ‘single-use’ items.

 

 

 

Ah, Thank you for the finer points of nib wiping....😜

For the pens whose feeds have exposed gills, blotting them off draws a lot of ink into the tissue.  This is particularly relevant for my Pelikans, Sailor KOPs, Wing Sung 630s and the Jinhao X159s and 9019s I use for my ink comparisons.

 

I'm not sure where you're going with the cartridge discussion so I can only comment on a few things.  I'm not sure how much ink is left in a cartridge when it's all used up but here's a pic of a Pilot cartridge that's almost used up and ready to be refilled...

Click for Larger

 

Doesn't look like there's much there.  What do you think?

 

The other thing about reusing cartridges is that they absolutely last a long time.

I posted a pic of one that lasted something like 10 or 15 years and only failed from squeezing it to prime the feed. 

 

I've refilled Parker, Waterman and Sheaffer cartridges with no problems.  Pilot cartridges are a gas, because if you fish out the little disk that seals them, it can be replaced after the cartridge is refilled, sealing it again.  I recently found one I refilled with blue ink something like 20 years ago...  All the water evaporated but the cartridge is Still sealed. 

Click for Larger

 

 

Sheaffer cartridges are probably the weakest.... but wait... there's one sitting in my Sheaffer Connaisseur refilled with Diamine Sapphinre.  I have no idea how old it or how many times it's been refilled, but it fits tight, doesn't leak and is really old.

Click for Larger

 

18 hours ago, Mangrove Jack said:

 

Where the piston fillers are concerned, it may be a good practice to occasionally move the piston up and down to prevent it getting stuck (piston seizure) in one position.  

 

It's a good idea.😀👍  I do that. 

[Misfit]

Today it has been the Jinhao 999 twin dragons pen, with a 1.1mm stub nib, filled from a sample of Iroshizuku Kon-Peki. 

[USG]

2 hours ago, Penguincollector said:

    I just wrestled with a Con-40 to barely ink my Pilot Prera Iro-Ai. That’s for sure a syringe filler- remembered too late. Everything else has a a different Pilot converter in in it and I forgot what a PITA those are. Anyway, the ink Is Diamne Moon Dust, which is shading a treat and the shimmer really looks amazing coming out of the CM nib. The penguin that I am coloring is very shiny. 
 

  I wrote with my blue Parker 45 Arrow F for a bit, using a cartridge of Parker Permanent Blue, and swatched Scribe Indigo (on loan from a friend) with a glass nib and a Eagle Pencil Co. 830 Bulb Point.

 

Hi PGC

I don't care for Pilot converters.  I have a bunch of squeeze converters from years ago, but you can't see the ink level and I read that the Con-40 is a beast to clean, so now I just  refill cartridges with an eye dropper.   (plus they rinse right out when you want to change inks)

[Mercian]

23 minutes ago, USG said:

Sheaffer cartridges are probably the weakest....

I’d be amazed if they were weaker than the long Pelikan GTP5 cartridges are!

 

Those have really thin walls, and have to be handled very gently. In comparison, the similarly-sized and similar-capacity cartridges made by Parker and Lamy feel like they have been made to withstand incoming artillery 😁

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, USG said:

I'm not sure where you're going with the cartridge discussion

It was in response to your earlier remarks about the great number of companies that make and sell c/c pens.

 

It was intended to show that companies generally have an interest in promoting the ink-in-cartridges filling-model over any other form of ink usage (including, it seems, NR’s reluctance to acknowledge the existence of its own converters that it makes for its own c/c pens).

i.e. to explain the reason for the phenomenon that you cited (that so many companies sell and market c/c pens).

 

You also said that most people are presumably buying and using cartridges all the time. That, too, is probably true.

But then, the usage pattern of most of what we may call ‘typical’ fountain pen owners is probably to own one (maybe two) fountain pens, and use them continually, with the same brand/colour of ink cartridge.

 

We here on FPN are ‘outliers’, in that many of us are ‘hobbyists’ who own many pens, and many inks, and like to switch between inks and pens as the fancy takes us.

Our pens are therefore more likely to sit unused for a while than is the sole fountain pen used continually with one type of cartridge by a more-typical fountain pen user such as, say, a school student.

And we hobbyists are certainly more likely to need to perform a more-thorough cleaning of our pens (e.g. when switching between different types/brands/colours of inks) than is a more-typical FP user, who just uses the same types of cartridges all the time.

 

In the ‘pen-cleaning regime’ discussions that occur here from time to time, several members have pointed out that the modern tendency for ‘obsessive’ or ‘excessive’ cleaning regimes is a new phenomenon, and that, back when fountain pens were typically in continuous use, many people never cleaned out their pens.

Even manufacturers only mentioned the idea of running tap-water through a pen’s feed/grip-section once every six months or so.

Again though, while that advice is perfectly fine for people whose ‘usage pattern’ is to use their pen continually, and with the same ink, or only switching inks rarely, it is less-appropriate for those of us ‘hobbyists’ who switch between pens and inks often.

 

Using converters in one’s pens does flush pens’ feeds more-effectively than does exclusive cartridge use (I think I remember Ron Z once saying that he advises his customers to use converters, and not cartridges, for this reason).

And for hobbyists who, like me, like to use iron-gall inks and pigment-based inks, it is important to keep the feeds of one’s pens as free from old ink residues as possible.

[Lithium466]

Some batches of Lamy cartridges have a very soft colored collar that will split easily. I have a box of red cartridges from a recent batch, and the collar consistently splits after 2-3 uses.

I also have some ~15 years old black cartridges that sustained many many refills without problem.