What pen(s) are you using today?

[pan101]

My pens today will be the chubby green Jinhao 9019 and a Laban Mento. Both with Diamine inks, Oxblood and Havasu Turquoise. 

[Misfit]

1 hour ago, AmandaW said:

I only got a partial refund for the broken pen. Is that how it works? I cleaned it, sent it back and even included a Sheaffer cartridge so the seller could get inky fingers too.

 

I paid bid $35 plus postage $10.60. I got back "bid $26.69, postage $8.31".

 

That's it. No more scambay for me.

It shouldn’t work that way. They sent you a broken pen. That should warrant a full refund and apology. I’m disappointed you didn’t get that. 

[RedPie]

3 hours ago, pan101 said:

My pens today will be the chubby green Jinhao 9019 and a Laban Mento. Both with Diamine inks, Oxblood and Havasu Turquoise. 

That Jinhao looks fantastic! That is another one I would like to have...☺️

[pan101]

1 hour ago, RedPie said:

That Jinhao looks fantastic! That is another one I would like to have...☺️

Thanks, Jinhao call it "lake blue" but in the flesh it looks more green. I like it so much I've just bought another in red, but they're cheaper than half my bottles of ink!

[Mercian]

13 hours ago, USG said:

Which brings me to the next point, inky fingers.  I could be wrong, but from the earliest days, when  people were writing with quills and liquid ink, the trend has been away from sticking something into an ink well.  It took a long time but finally there were pens that held their own ink supply, (eliminating the constant dipping). Then there was the snorkel, the capillary filling system and the cartridge.  All seemed to be designed to separate the pen from the bottle and inky fingers.

 

It's true that in terms of ink, cartridge ink is much more expensive than bottled ink, but my feeling is that cartridges were developed as a way to make fountain pens less dependent on the ink bottle and easier to use.  The idea, it seems, was to get the pen away from the ink bottle, rather than as a money making endeavor.

 

I'm starting to wonder if the cost of the ink itself factors into the cost of cartridges, if you consider the equipment to mold and fill cartridges, the packaging materials and machinery involved.

 

What does everyone else think?

 

As you & I are at risk of veering so-far off-topic as to constitute an actual ‘thread hijack’, I’m putting my (predictably, annoyingly-prolix 😔) reply inside the following ‘spoiler box’, to make it easier for people to just scroll past it.

 

Spoiler

I think that you are correct wrt the original purpose of selling ink in easy-to-replace cartridges.

 

I assume that they were initially invented specifically as a way to try to attract ‘most people’ back to using fountain pens, at a time when ‘most people’ were switching from buying FPs to instead buying the first generation of reliable ballpoints.
I even I think that I’ve seen reference to the marketing materials for early ballpoints specifically making mention of the ‘no more messy bottle-filling’ or ‘no more inky fingers’ ‘USP’ of ballpoints.

 

But of course cartridges also facilitate vendor lock-in, and the extreme difference in the price-per-ml (or per-page-of-writing) between ink in cartridges and ink in bottles makes me suspect that the manufacturers’ profit-margin is much higher on cartridges than it is on bottled inks.
Which ‘greater-return-on-investment’ is, naturally, a very-high-priority ‘motivator’ for any business.

 

I expect that the cost-of-manufacture of the ‘disposable’ cartridges themselves does play a part in increasing the price-per-ml of the ink in them over that of ink in bottles. But, as a consumer, the ‘whys-&-wherefores’ of the extra costs are immaterial to me.
For clarity, I do appreciate that many people will be willing to pay the high premium for ink in cartridges, because they are not purchasing just ink, but also convenience.

Now for the ‘cheery’ part:

If I were still alive in the last quarter of this century (I won’t be), I would be interested to see whether disposable cartridges had yet, along with other single-use plastic products, gone the way of the dodo.

After all, even assuming that no ‘resource wars’ break out, and that we don’t see a General Systems Collapse caused by mass-migrations as climate change causes increasingly-widespread crop failures, there’s the looming phenomenon called ‘Peak Oil’ to consider.

 

If anyone isn’t familiar with that term, it is the name given to the imminent problem that, as the growing populations of the world’s ‘developing economies’ understandably seek to achieve for themselves the living standards that are currently enjoyed by those of us who live in wealthy ‘western’ societies, the demand for petroleum (& the products derived from it) is going to far outstrip the available supply of the raw material.
Not least because we have now exploited all the ‘low-hanging fruit’, and the remaining oil reserves are located in regions where extraction is much more difficult, and so its costs are much higher.
’Peak oil’ is the point at which the production of oil peaks, after which it will inevitably dwindle - whereas the demand for oil will continue to increase for as long as the number of humans on this rock increases.
This will cause the ‘fair market price’ of petroleum to rocket, and that price-increase will be multiplied for all products that are made out of refined-&-processed petroleum.
The rocketing price will presumably make cartridges ‘uneconomic’ to produce - except as a very-high-cost ‘luxury’ item that is produced only in tiny numbers, and purchasable only by the class of people who can afford to ‘throw money away’.

All scientific considerations (& ‘political’ factors) aside, I also expect that petroleum will no longer be burned (whether to supply energy for vehicles, heat for homes, or to generate electricity) after the point at which the energy-cost of getting ‘a barrel’ of it out of the ground exceeds the amount of energy that is contained in ‘one barrel’ of it.
Because doing that would be more-expensive than just using the energy that would be required to effect extraction to provide locomotion/heat/electricity.

Petroleum may still get used to power military vehicles (e.g. jet-engined aerial drones &/or autonomous tanks & naval drones), because of its high stored-energy-density; and perhaps also produced in small quantities so that wealthy owners of ‘classic vehicles’ can play with their exclusive ‘toys’; but its ‘commodity price’ will make it just too valuable for most people/societies to ‘waste’ on burning it.

I mean, how many folk do you know who heat their home by burning $100 bills? 😁

 

Slàinte,
M.
 

[AmandaW]

Today's journal pen was a purple Jinhao 86 filled with Van Dieman's Sweet Fig.

 

And experimental chill time used a Jinhao 450 with a fude nib (from a Duke pen that cracked) and Platinum Carbon ink. The colour is watercolour. All on a scrap of watercolour paper. Stuff like this is my new meditation practice. Rather different to my art, but it will end up in there even if that's not the intention.

 

[Misfit]

I like the art you made with your fountain pens @AmandaW .

[ParramattaPaul]

Onoto Excel.

[jmccarty3]

On 2/16/2024 at 2:00 AM, Baka1969 said:

 

Probably the same reason I'm also an enthusiast of mechanical watches or tube audiophile amps and turntables. Being analog in a digital world.  Intentionally slowing our lives down to appreciate things just a little more.  The artistry of something mechanical.  Nostalgia. 

I concur completely (and also share the same interests).

[Sailor Kenshin]

7 hours ago, Misfit said:

I like the art you made with your fountain pens @AmandaW .

Me too.  It has a stained glass look.  

[Penguincollector]

9 hours ago, AmandaW said:

Today's journal pen was a purple Jinhao 86 filled with Van Dieman's Sweet Fig.

 

And experimental chill time used a Jinhao 450 with a fude nib (from a Duke pen that cracked) and Platinum Carbon ink. The colour is watercolour. All on a scrap of watercolour paper. Stuff like this is my new meditation practice. Rather different to my art, but it will end up in there even if that's not the intention.

 

  This is beautiful.

[Penguincollector]

 Yesterday I used a dip Eagle Pencil Co. Bulb Point in an oblique holder for ink journaling and swatching. Today I have yet to pick up a pen, but I have some journaling time scheduled with my Namiki once the morning’s footy games are done. 

[RedPie]

Today I put Noodler's Hunter Green in my 50 year old Pelikano. It writes beautiful with its "F" nib. I am very pleased with the outcome!

[Schaumburg_Swan]

On 2/8/2024 at 12:00 PM, pan101 said:

Today's pen is a brown tortoise shell 50's/60's vintage Pelikan 400NN with a semi-flexible fine nib. The ink is Diamine's Ruby Blues.  

 

Hi,

 

a really nice pen!

 

Best

Jens

[Andy1883]

On 2/16/2024 at 8:22 AM, pan101 said:

My pens today will be the chubby green Jinhao 9019 and a Laban Mento

Hi @pan101, I've been looking at the Mento for some time, but read a review that mentioned issues with the nib.  Have you had any problems?

[AmandaW]

Today's journal pen was a Sheaffer School pen from the 70s with Diaminw Writer's Blood.

 

Chill time pen and watercolour used a Sailor Profit Casual with a Zoom nib and Platinum Carbon. (I don't know what the paper is - just a small scrap from the stash.) As I was making this one it reminded me of water-worn river stones.

 

[pan101]

5 hours ago, Andy1883 said:

Hi @pan101, I've been looking at the Mento for some time, but read a review that mentioned issues with the nib.  Have you had any problems?

Hi Andy, I haven't had the pen long but so far I'm happy with the pen/nib. I believe it is a Schmidt #6 nib and quite a stiff steel nib. I've just compared it with the Jowo #6 nib in my Leonardo and I'd say the smoothness is comparable, the Jowo maybe slightly wetter but the Schmidt is wet enough. I'm not aware of what problems have been experienced but I haven't had any and was happy with this pen right out of the box.

[pan101]

7 hours ago, Schaumburg_Swan said:

 

Hi,

 

a really nice pen!

 

Best

Jens

Thanks Jens, I like vintage pens but I'm thinking I should get a modern Pelikan to compare.

[Carrau]

My Waterman Expert with a Fine nib inked with Birmingham’s new Kenai Fjords, similar to Blackstone’s and RO’ s  Sydney Harbor inks.

[Andy1883]

2 hours ago, pan101 said:

7 hours ago, Andy1883 said:

 

Hi Andy, I haven't had the pen long but so far I'm happy with the pen/nib

Thanks @pan101.  Sounds good.  I do like the size and colour options