This is a thread for showing off your fine fountain pens, inks, and accessories; pencils and lead and other writing implements too. (For newbs, there’s a video on what fountain pens are and how they work at the end of this post.)
Why would anyone care about fountain pens? (@pvn) Well, they’re just cool. They can last a lifetime. A bottle of ink is practically bottomless. There’s a variety of materials, styles, shapes, sizes, and colors. Some of my absolute favorite people are into pens.
https://twitter.com/ryanoferguson/status/1439928079665795072?s=20
https://twitter.com/natalietran/status/1054660712725852160?s=20
Nat seems to favor Pilot’s Vanishing Point (retractable rhodium-plated 18 k gold nib, ~$180) fountain pens. I think that’s what she’s got here.
According to wiki, the history of the fountain pen goes back over a thousand years to an Egyptian caliph that “demanded a pen that would not stain his hands or clothes”. Later, DaVinci probably designed and made his own.
Despite the desires of despots and artists, I’m guessing the early fountain pens still leaked and clogged and besides would have been too expensive for most people so quill pens dominated until better fountain pen designs came along, patents started to be issued, and mass-production became possible in the 1800s.
But everything changes, and the ballpoint pen overtook the fountain pen in popularity in the 1950s. Nevertheless, the fountain pen has stuck around and sales have actually gone up over the last decade or so. It’s a complicated machine and innovations in design and materials are still coming along.
Here are some of my tools. They’re cheap 'cause I’m poor.
I just got the Kaweko Classic Sport (navy with the extra fine nib just like AOC’s!) from Goulet Pen Co., along with the clip and a converter for $45 including tax and shipping. The converter is tiny! I’ll probabaly try to convert the pen to an eyedropper. Could have gotten all this at Amazon for a couple bucks less with quicker shipping but Goulet is to pens what Dunder-Mifflin is to paper-- great customer service. They even give you lollypops!
Below the Kaweko are two Pilot Metropolitans. Fountain pens can be extremely expensive (hundreds for very nice pens, thousands for collectibles), but you can get decent pens like these for under $20.
Next is a Fisher Bullet Space Pen, ~$25. AOC has a chrome version.
After that are your basic Pilot G-2 gel pens. These are cheap ($1-2 each in multi-pen packs), reliable, and available in lots of colors. Fountain pens are neat, but I use these G-2s more because a lot of the time I just want to jot something down and throw the pen down somewhere.
Last is a mechanical pencil. I’m not sure of the brand, but more than one manufacturer has made similar pencils. Currently, I see Sakura SumoGrips for ~$7-8 on Amazon. I’ve had this one a while as you can see by the yellowed rubber grip. I like this style of pencil because they’re cheap, practically indestructible, and have big fat erasers for people who make a lot of mistakes. You can replace the erasers with the ones Pentel sells for their Clic retractable erasers by cutting them to length. This pencil takes a 0.5 mm lead and I like a softer lead (B or even 2B). Softer lead of course makes a darker mark, which is easier for my old eyes to see. I often favor a version of this pencil with thicker 0.7 mm lead now because I think I press harder than I used to so thinner lead tends to break on me.
Promised video on fountain pen basics:
Further information in this playlist.
