What pen(s) are you using today?

[OldTravelingShoe]

On 3/28/2022 at 11:15 AM, mallymal1 said:

Is it a soft nib?

@mallymal1, thank you for asking. I have limited experience in this sense, but to me it indeed seems like a soft nib. The tines spread apart easily and there is flow without interruption. (I don't know if softness is more a property of the spring; in that case, the nib seems to me quite springy, a bit like the Pilot SF nibs.) 

 

I haven't pressed hard, and already the line variation covers what for me looks like an F to M range vertically (up to 14 lines per 5x5mm square, per @A Smug Dill method), EF to F horizontally (17 lines). 

[OldTravelingShoe]

19 hours ago, flodoc said:

Omas Arte Italiano in brown w/18K fine nib and Noodler's Golden Brown ink. Purchased used on eBay years ago and one of my best writing pens til this day!

Amazing pens, @flodoc! 

[OldTravelingShoe]

On 3/28/2022 at 2:40 PM, Carrau said:

For Amberlea, who asked so nicely.

Great pen, great photos, @Carrau. Thank you for sharing.

 

@amberleadavis, thanks for asking 😄

[A Smug Dill]

2 minutes ago, OldTravelingShoe said:

I haven't pressed hard, and already the line variation covers what for me looks like an F to M range vertically (up to 14 lines per 5x5mm square, per @A Smug Dill method), EF to F horizontally (17 lines). 

 

Hmmm, personally I'd call ≥13 distinct horizontal lines in a 5mm-tall space on Rhodia DotPad 80g/m² paper fitting of the width grade of Extra Fine, since that equates roughly to 0.2mm–0.24mm thick lines of ink. (Before you say that's more stringent than even Platinum's ‘standard’ according to its published chart of nib width grades to line widths, keep in mind that the same lines of ink would usually be broader on ‘normal’ paper instead of Rhodia or Clairefontaine paper.) 11 or 12 lines would be quite typical of (non-Japanese) Fine nibs, from what I've seen, and 9 or 10 lines would be Medium to me (bordering on unusable for my ‘fine’ or small writing).

 

That said, I prefer to use nibs that are capable of putting ≥14 horizontal lines in a 5mm-tall space; not every Aurora or Faber-Castell EF nib can do that (but two out of two Diplomat EF nibs can, in my experience; as can most HongDian and Delike 26mm EF nibs).

[OldTravelingShoe]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Hmmm, personally I'd call ≥13 distinct horizontal lines in a 5mm-tall space on Rhodia DotPad 80g/m² paper fitting of the width grade of Extra Fine, since that equates roughly to 0.2mm–0.24mm thick lines of ink. (Before you say that's more stringent than even Platinum's ‘standard’ according to its published chart of nib width grades to line widths, keep in mind that the same lines of ink would usually be broader on ‘normal’ paper instead of Rhodia or Clairefontaine paper.) 11 or 12 lines would be quite typical of (non-Japanese) Fine nibs, from what I've seen, and 9 or 10 lines would be Medium to me (bordering on unusable for my ‘fine’ or small writing).

 

That said, I prefer to use nibs that are capable of putting ≥14 horizontal lines in a 5mm-tall space; not every Aurora or Faber-Castell EF nib can do that (but two out of two Diplomat EF nibs can, in my experience; as can most HongDian and Delike 26mm EF nibs).

Very interesting. Looks like I should move one or even _two_ notches toward the finer side of the range: my original F to M becomes EF to F, my original EF becomes UEF. 

 

This new scale (for me) seems a bit different than my intuition - - here, I felt the pen was more like an M, or maybe an FM with natural pressure - -, but the numbers seem clear. 

[Mercian]

On 3/23/2022 at 6:46 AM, sophiaaa said:

I've used bic biro pens years ago,

Old fashioned, very high quality. Perfect writing tool. Ink does not smear.

I have managed to smear the ink from Bic pens 🙄

 

I should hire myself out as a product Beta-tester.

I can - even when following instructions to the letter - cause any thing to fail/break/malfunction. Often in ways that its manufacturers/designers didn’t even think possible.

 

That is my only unique talent.

[Mercian]

Today’s pens:

Pilot 78G fitted with ‘M’ nib from a Pilot Metropolitan, filled with a cartridge of Pilot ‘Blue/Black’;

 

Parker 75 ‘F’ with a converter loaded with Parker Quink ‘Blue’;

 

Lamy 2000 ‘F’, filled with Lamy Turquoise.

 

The contrast between the girth of these pens (the first two are skinny, in comparison the Lamy is ‘buxom’) and the relative thicknesses of their nibs (the first two are similar, with the Lamy ‘F’ being broader) make switching between them ‘interesting’ 😁

[essayfaire]

12 hours ago, mallymal1 said:

TWSBI Vac 700with a 1.1 stub, inked with J. Herbin's Stormy Grey.

 

That's a wonderful pairing!  Enjoy.

[inkstainedruth]

On 3/28/2022 at 8:40 AM, Carrau said:

For Amberlea, who asked so nicely.

And I'm glad she did.  

This may very well be the ink I've been looking for to replace MB Leo Tolstoy when I run out of that....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[amberleadavis]

5 hours ago, Mercian said:

I have managed to smear the ink from Bic pens 🙄

 

I should hire myself out as a product Beta-tester.

I can - even when following instructions to the letter - cause any thing to fail/break/malfunction. Often in ways that its manufacturers/designers didn’t even think possible.

 

That is my only unique talent.

 

 

I had that job!

Here is the Bexley with some light pink ink from Sailor. I had to put in a different nib because the Bexley nib needs to be repaired.

 

 

[AmandaW]

5 hours ago, Mercian said:

in comparison the Lamy is ‘buxom’

 

Good to know. Perhaps there's a Lamy 2000 in my future after all. I like slender pens, but on achy days my hands do not.

[ParramattaPaul]

I am now using my newly arrived and inked (Diamine Imperial Blue) Onoto Scholar.

[Mercian]

4 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

 

Good to know. Perhaps there's a Lamy 2000 in my future after all. I like slender pens, but on achy days my hands do not.

I feel it fair to ‘warn’ you about its balance - its steel ‘nose-cone’ means that much of the weight of the Lamy 2000 is concentrated towards its nib end.

Now, the way that I hold the 2000 (I have a ‘classic tripod’ grip) means that I find the effect of this to be really good, because the pen ‘wants to’ be point-down, and ‘writes itself’ ‘under its own weight’.

 

Because I am very impressed by the 2000, I let a friend of mine try it out. She also prefers narrow pens, although she did say that she loved writing with her mum’s Parker “51”.
She said that my Lamy 2000 (‘F’) had the smoothest nib that she had ever used, but that she hated its ‘nose-heavy’ balance.
She writes with a relatively-unusual four-fingered grip, in which she holds her pens at an almost-vertical angle to the page. Her grip meant that she also hated the Lamy Safari that I let her try out (with its tripod-grip-enforcing grip-section moulding).

She also disliked my Pelikan M205, because its cap-threads are positioned at exactly the point on the pen that all four of her digits grasp.

 

I advised my friend to attempt to find a Lamy Logo to try-out, but I have not yet established whether she has done so - which gives me a good excuse to write to her, so I thank you for making me remember about it 🙂

[AmandaW]

10 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Now, the way that I hold the 2000 (I have a ‘classic tripod’ grip) means that I find the effect of this to be really good, because the pen ‘wants to’ be point-down, and ‘writes itself’ ‘under its own weight’.

 

More points in it's favour.

 

Does that apply to Makrolon version too?

 

[Mercian]

1 minute ago, AmandaW said:

 

More points in it's favour.

 

Does that apply to Makrolon version too?

 

I only have the Makrolon version.

Because although I do like the look of the steel one, I found out that it has no ink-window, and is thus a bottle-filled pen whose amount of remaining ink is very difficult to determine reliably.

 

I am a Chartered Pessimist with a Persecution-Complex, so the thought of buying a steel 2000 strikes me as being over-optimistic to the point of verging on the margins of Foolishness.

This is not helped by the fact that its higher price also conflicts with the constant whisperings of my Yorkshire Blood 😄

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, amberleadavis said:

I had that job!

Here is the Bexley with some light pink ink from Sailor. I had to put in a different nib because the Bexley nib needs to be repaired.

I hope that the Bexley nib was not one of the items whose ‘sub-optimality’ of structural design/construction you managed to ‘discover’ 😉

 

Also, looking at your photo, if you had not mentioned that the ink was made by Sailor (& if the brand name were not visible on top of its cap), I would have assumed that it was a Visconti - look at that bottle!

 

My only Sailor ink came in one of the squat little cuboid bottles (which I actually like, but it certainly doesn’t have the va-va-voom or brio of that one).

[amberleadavis]

Well, it sort of arrived broken. I was just the discoverer.  The seller made it right. For now, I have a Conklin Toledo nib in it.

 

 

[AmandaW]

Today's journal pen is a TWSBI Eco Clear EF filled with Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses.

 

 

Which reminds me... last week I snapped a picture of a black swan I saw while at the park that day and posted it. And no one commented! It's not a fantastic picture, just my phone, but still are black swans everywhere and boring these days? I thought someone would be interested...

 

[Mercian]

1 minute ago, AmandaW said:

Which reminds me... last week I snapped a picture of a black swan I saw while at the park that day and posted it. And no one commented! It's not a fantastic picture, just my phone, but still are black swans everywhere and boring these days? I thought someone would be interested...

 

I saw that when you posted it, and was initially going to reply “O! Rara avis!” - but then I remembered that you (unlike Juvenal, and me) are in ‘stralia, from where said beasts hail.

 

Obviously they’re almost never to be found in England, but I remember TMS commentators talking about seeing them on the river beside the WACA a few tours ago, and so I assumed that they’re probably not that rare where you are.

Was I wrong? Are they in fact still reasonably unusual to see in WA?

[AmandaW]

2 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Are they in fact still reasonably unusual to see in WA?

 

They're still around, but it still makes my day to see one in the wild. Same with emus and kangaroos (unless they're actually in the garden munching on my roses). And those black swans had babies tagging along.