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Edmond Dantes posted:Has anybody had the chance to check out Goulet's refills for the Traveller's Notebook? I just got a tomoe river dot paper a couple days ago and your post reminded me about it. I just now wrote on it with all my fountain pens and a good rollerball, they all feel outstanding and very smooth on it yet there's no bleed through to the other side of the paper despite how thin the sheets are. Related, I had never written with them side by side before, but now I actually think the zebra v-301 is both a nicer pen and has nicer ink than the Pilot Metropolitan.
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Oct 15, 2016 10:50
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Admiral Nelson posted:Hi folks, I'm looking to get my wife a nice pen for our anniversary. Could you help me with a suggestion for a nice pen that looks good as well as writes well? She grew up using fountain pens in school, and currently has a Pilot Metro based on this thread's advice. I'd like to have something for her that looks like a gift, and thus the Lamy 2000 suggested here wouldn't really do. Goulet suggests things such as the Pilot Falcon or Platinum 3776 as nice looking pens that aren't $500+. Somewhere around 200-300 would be fine for me. She would use it daily and so it wouldn't be a desk showpiece or such. Really appreciate any suggestions! Pelikan m400 or m600 should be in your price range and IMO are just classy and elegant as all hell
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Oct 15, 2016 11:01
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Heath posted:The 0.6 seems so small to lend any noticeable "stubbiness" to your writing. Is it fairly pronounced? The nemosime 0.6mm is good enough for daily writing and is reasonably narrow. Other stubs like the Lamy 1.1mm feel similar however some feel too wide. The stubbiness varies quite a lot between brands so take the official measurement with a grain of salt.
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Oct 15, 2016 14:48
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Doctor Dogballs posted:I just got a tomoe river dot paper a couple days ago and your post reminded me about it. I just now wrote on it with all my fountain pens and a good rollerball, they all feel outstanding and very smooth on it yet there's no bleed through to the other side of the paper despite how thin the sheets are. I cant imagine spending six dollars for 48 pages of passport sized paper. The midori refills are dirt cheap in Japan. I think it might cost 3 dollars for the full sized fancy bible thin paper and 2 bucks for the grid insert. I am in Malaysia right now but I will be back in Japan in November if anyone wants some stationary stuff at cost.
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Oct 15, 2016 15:09
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I recently got a Pilot Metro and I don't think I'll be using a ballpoint again if I can help it. My only reservation is that with the pen I got a bottle of Noodler's 54th Massachusetts, and it's left a coat of ink on the feed that reminds me of a coat of acrylic paint. The part where the nib connects to the section/grip also has a stubborn blue tinge to it now. Did I accidentally heck up my first pen?
Wales Grey fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Oct 15, 2016 |
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Oct 15, 2016 15:45
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quote is not edit
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Oct 15, 2016 15:48
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Just give it a good rinse when it's empty, your pen will be fine.
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Oct 16, 2016 19:12
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Pilot Parallels are up on Massdrop, and it's not a terrible price, even with the shipping. Individually they're $10 USD on Goulet, $14 CAD on Amazon, and nearly $20 CAD in any local shop I've found them. I love the 1.5, but admit that the 6mm is too big for anything practical. I just bought a second 1.5 so I can do the colour shading more easily. e: Can't be arsed to figure out what to post instead but that URL has a referrer code on it. I find Massdrop pretty useless so don't need whatever spiff they put on that poo poo. E2: We're still a-ways off from starting a FP secret santa, but it's got approval from mods and OP. Usually the terms are $20-30ish gift, no expectations other than getting something, and volunteers picking up if some jerk deadbeats. I can try to match people by continent so that no one gets stuck with spending $50 shipping on a $20 gift, though it might mean one or two people can't play. Any suggestions for specific terms? Pixelante fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Oct 17, 2016 |
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Oct 17, 2016 03:31
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Joined that massdrop - I only have the smallest Parallel but t writes great and I look forward to messing around with the other sizes. For anyone tempted to get the cartridges, they are very good but different from normal fountain pen ink in that they are very vibrant and there is hardly any shading. It is also much cheaper to grab them off of Amazon rather than what they are charging in the massdrop.
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Oct 17, 2016 06:00
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melodicwaffle posted:I ordered a syringe and some little containers awhile back to try and "fix" Rachmaninoff with a little water, and that worked like a charm. Someone brought up having trouble with Dostoevsky (?) - I dunno if Dostoevsky is as saturated as Rachmaninoff and will retain its color as well, but I found 4:1 ink to water was perfect and solved the bleeding issues without changing the color a bit. It still dries on the nib after 30 seconds of no writing and has some startup issues, but it's nowhere near as bad and actually usable now. My Dostoevsky doesn't seem to hold itself together long enough to maintain much saturation, but I am glad to hear the water bit worked for you — it's what I do with some old Herbin inks that don't behave as nicely as they used to. The moleskine I'm using is mostly fine for fountain pen ink (lucky me) except that it tends to take a bit longer to dry than is really desirable for something you jot a note in and tuck into a pocket. On a whim I grabbed a little "Poppin'" notebook when I was at staples because it was like, 2.50. It's actually pretty great — dries nice and quick, even with wetter/slower ink & pen combos, like Noodler's Aircorp Blue-black and Legal Blue in a Pelikan F and a Jinhao (who the hell knows, but it's kinda Western Medium-ish). It also didn't feather until I used the firehose Jinhao/Blue combo, which barely feathered. There's a bit of showthrough, so it might be annoying if one side of the page used a particularly wet/dark ink and then the reverse had something in a lighter color or pencil, but it didn't actually bleed through, which is pretty impressive. My only downside is that it's just white paper, rather than ivory, but that's a pretty minor thing. Only other thing of note is that it seems to only come in bright-rear end colors, if that's a thing that'd bother you. Still, for $2.50 it's great and the paper's pretty great.
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Oct 17, 2016 07:22
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The postman dropped off a Vac 700 today, in 1.1 Stub. It's my first stub nib and I'm quite enamoured by it going to need a lot of practice however.
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Oct 17, 2016 08:31
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Pixelante posted:E2: We're still a-ways off from starting a FP secret santa, but it's got approval from mods and OP. Usually the terms are $20-30ish gift, no expectations other than getting something, and volunteers picking up if some jerk deadbeats. I can try to match people by continent so that no one gets stuck with spending $50 shipping on a $20 gift, though it might mean one or two people can't play. Any suggestions for specific terms? If it gets bigger than you expect, have a word with Leperflesh; he runs the TradGames secret santa and that's run remarkably smoothly for the past few years.
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Oct 17, 2016 11:07
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Hey all, I've been using a TWSBI Diamond 580 + Noodler's Borealis Black as my daily writer for a while now. I want to get some more pens and inks to play around with. I have a Pilot Metro, but I find the converters and cartridges are hard to use and hard to clean. I'm looking at getting a nice, cheap piston-filler (or eyedropper, maybe) to play around with. Any recommendations? Based on Goulet, there's a couple Noodler's (Ahab and Konrad) and TWSBI (Diamond 580, Eco, Mini) in the $0 - $50 range, and as much as I want to get another Diamond 580, that's really a bit more expensive than I really want right now. Thanks!
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Oct 17, 2016 17:56
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Get an Eco.
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Oct 17, 2016 18:27
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howe_sam posted:Get an Eco. I'll echo the Eco. It's a great pen for the price point. Loads of ink capacity and the same basic maintenance that you'll run into with your 580. I got the stub nib on mine and it's been my go to for "fancy" correspondence ever since.
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Oct 17, 2016 18:29
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howe_sam posted:Get an Eco. The Eco is, by a wide margin, the best value in the price range. So great. Also, takes the nibs from the TWSBI mini if you've got any of those.
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Oct 17, 2016 18:41
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Doctor Dogballs posted:Pelikan m400 or m600 should be in your price range and IMO are just classy and elegant as all hell I ended up ordering the Pelikan M400, plus a bottle of Tsuki-Yo ink. Thanks for the help, everyone! 
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Oct 17, 2016 21:12
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As I go further down the rabbit hole, I am looking at vintage restored pens and am probably going to get a wet noodle. Anyone have any advice where to look? There is so much on ebay and I am finding some good sites from reddit and the fountain pen network, but I was wondering if any of you had recommendations from experience and if so what you got and where you got it.
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Oct 18, 2016 00:13
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I've bought a few vintage pens off of eBay, but they really aren't my jam.
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Oct 18, 2016 00:53
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rio posted:As I go further down the rabbit hole, I am looking at vintage restored pens and am probably going to get a wet noodle. Anyone have any advice where to look? There is so much on ebay and I am finding some good sites from reddit and the fountain pen network, but I was wondering if any of you had recommendations from experience and if so what you got and where you got it. In my experience, it's cheaper and more rewarding to restore your own pens. It shouldn't be too hard to find a pen from an estate sale or similar source that only needs simple fixes like a new ink sac, new feed, or what have you. Note that these fixes are only simple if they're new-in-box old parts you can still get or (in the case of ink sacs) still being manufactured and sold new, but provided you can get the parts you can usually learn how to do it online and it's easier than something like replacing a busted filling mechanism. I bought and restored a few Esterbrooks. I honestly couldn't tell you where to begin other than get some cheap ones in not-terrible condition, for which information is readily available online. I was able to figure out what my one lever-filler was (Esterbrook LJ) just by a page about the history of Esterbrook pens and a good look over the pen itself. The cap and barrel "jewels" were distinctive and identified the model for me, and then it was just a matter of finding a site that sold the right sized latex sac. Fortunately the site that sold those, which I've since forgotten, also sold talc, shellac, and everything else I needed. Esterbrooks, for their part, are very nice, very businesslike pens and the company made a lot of different nibs in a lot of different styles, and many are still available. venus de lmao fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 01:03
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rio posted:As I go further down the rabbit hole, I am looking at vintage restored pens and am probably going to get a wet noodle. Anyone have any advice where to look? There is so much on ebay and I am finding some good sites from reddit and the fountain pen network, but I was wondering if any of you had recommendations from experience and if so what you got and where you got it. I've purchased several from Greg Minuskin, but the availability is a crapshoot. You need to have something scripted to check his blog for updates and notify you when he posts, because the pens sell within ~ 20 minutes of him posting them. Also, GM is a loving turd of human to deal with. Good with a vintage nib though.
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Oct 18, 2016 01:19
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Thanks - I tried to get the Sheaffer .4 stub he just had up but I was just a little too late. What is his deal; why don't you like him personally?
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Oct 18, 2016 06:31
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rio posted:What is his deal; why don't you like him personally? He's got a legendary rep for being a little poo poo. Some examples here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/2maet8/so_greg_minuskin_is_kind_of_an_ass/
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Oct 18, 2016 07:35
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My second hand TWSBI 580 just arrived. It has a fine nib but I think I will get a stub and like 5 more TWSBI pens because this thing owns.
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Oct 18, 2016 07:52
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I've had my eye on Black Swan in English Roses for a few months and I think Goulet just sold out of it to-day when I went to order some. I just got a sample of it and a Rhodia pad instead. I have a white Safari and a second stub nib coming 
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Oct 18, 2016 07:54
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Kessel posted:He's got a legendary rep for being a little poo poo. Some examples here: Holy poo poo. Well then, I will not be checking out his site and waiting for a pen I would like to order then, Jesus Christ. He said I was second in line for the .4 stub - thank goodness the buyer didn't back out and me wake up with numerous angry emails from him ending with him telling me I was permabanned from his site for not replying in a timely fashion (like several of the posters in that thread said happened to them) 
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Oct 18, 2016 08:43
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Premature ejacula- posted:My second hand TWSBI 580 just arrived. It has a fine nib but I think I will get a stub and like 5 more TWSBI pens because this thing owns. Be aware that TWSBIs have a habit of exploding in to a million pieces and firing red-hot shrapnel directly at your eyes. Something I heard from a friend of a friend *nods* Meanwhile I'll be over here eyeing Delta #12. grack fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Oct 18, 2016 10:25
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howe_sam posted:Get an Eco. That looks perfect for what I want to do. Thanks!
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Oct 18, 2016 14:21
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My friend got a second Nemosine Singularity and it was writing fine for a few hours and then suddenly started having severe flow issues. She tried setting the feed a little deeper and it worked okay for a little while but started having the same problem. Any ideas? She writes for a bit and then suddenly the lines start to thin out and stop writing entirely.
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Oct 18, 2016 15:49
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rio posted:Holy poo poo. Well then, I will not be checking out his site and waiting for a pen I would like to order then, Jesus Christ. He said I was second in line for the .4 stub - thank goodness the buyer didn't back out and me wake up with numerous angry emails from him ending with him telling me I was permabanned from his site for not replying in a timely fashion (like several of the posters in that thread said happened to them) Honestly, if you don't try to engage the guy in a conversation (I did, which was my mistake), and sit on your sale until the money changes hands it's fine. He's just another turd who sells things that I like. I don't have to like him, I just have to know how to do business with him.
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Oct 18, 2016 16:42
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NeurosisHead posted:The Eco is, by a wide margin, the best value in the price range. So great. Also, takes the nibs from the TWSBI mini if you've got any of those. It also accepts any Jowo #5 nib, including those from the Diamond 580. Mine currently has a Nemosine #5 in it that is perfectly acceptable (when compared to the mis-cut nib that came with it that TWSBI refused to replace). Edit: Nemosine nibs are probably of Chinese origin, but they have similar enough dimensions with Jowos that they work.
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Oct 18, 2016 17:40
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My Man Shran posted:It also accepts any Jowo #5 nib, including those from the Diamond 580. Mine currently has a Nemosine #5 in it that is perfectly acceptable (when compared to the mis-cut nib that came with it that TWSBI refused to replace). Nemosine nibs are made by Jowo. Heath posted:My friend got a second Nemosine Singularity and it was writing fine for a few hours and then suddenly started having severe flow issues. She tried setting the feed a little deeper and it worked okay for a little while but started having the same problem. Any ideas? She writes for a bit and then suddenly the lines start to thin out and stop writing entirely. First thing to try is a thorough clean - empty the pen of ink and then draw and expel warm water with a few drops of dish soap, and then rinse thoroughly with warm water and see if that helps.
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Oct 18, 2016 17:53
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grack posted:Nemosine nibs are made by Jowo. Fair. Was that confirmed in a statement from XFP/Nemosine or something? I've never been able to track down an origin for them.
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Oct 18, 2016 18:01
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My Man Shran posted:Fair. Was that confirmed in a statement from XFP/Nemosine or something? I've never been able to track down an origin for them. Nemosine very clearly states on their packaging that the nibs are made in Germany. I mean it's either Jowo or Bock and Jowo nibs tend to be cheaper so   Also the nibs and feeds are identical to my Jowo-made Levenger nibs.
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Oct 18, 2016 18:34
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Premature ejacula- posted:My second hand TWSBI 580 just arrived. It has a fine nib but I think I will get a stub and like 5 more TWSBI pens because this thing owns. 580 stub is what I roll with for note taking. I have a B nib in the post, but I kinda like the stub. Finer tips just don't show off the ink enough. A bold in a Diamond Mini is perfect. Only downside is that if people notice the pens, they think it's a vape. 
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Oct 18, 2016 23:25
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I ended up ordering an Eclipse ring top from Peyton Pens. It is a flex that has worn down the a left oblique - the writing samples looked cool so I ordered it. I'll post back with a trip report - it is my first vintage flex and the way the nib had worn down looks like it will be a lot of fun to write with.
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Oct 19, 2016 02:09
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Should I get a Traveler's Notebook or a Hobonichi Techo? I'm looking for something that can be used as a planner and also for random notes and thoughts and is also customizable. Which I guess they both are? How do the papers compare? Will the TN pen holder hold a Lamy 2000?
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Oct 22, 2016 00:34
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My TN holder fits a Lamy Safari or Vista perfectly but it's a little tight with an Al-Star, which is very slightly thicker. I don't know how the 2000 compares to those.
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Oct 22, 2016 00:49
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Never touched a Hobonichi, but the TN is super customizable. Since it's all about buy a cover and then whatever you want inside. They're a bit odd sized so maybe get a single insert to decide if you like. Also you can find alternative covers and inserts (etsy, goulet, etc) so you got a good amount to choose from. I love my passport TN though, it's small enough to carry and write in wherever.
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Oct 22, 2016 01:18
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The big criticism of the TN for me is that it only has one strap built into the cover. It makes fitting more than two notebooks a little awkward, as the middle one always ends up sandwiched a little funny between the others. I've seen custom ones on Etsy that have 3 strings, which seems like a better setup to me.
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Oct 22, 2016 03:32
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