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Hello fountain pen goons! After trying out some of the Zebra disposable fountain pens I decided I'd treat myself for my upcoming birthday and ordered myself a Lamy Safari (white, fine nib) and a bottle of ink (Ferris Wheel Press, Moss Park Green). Things arrived today and I tried them out. One thing I noticed is that the nib on the pen feels much scratchier on the paper than the disposable fountain pens I tried out earlier. It almost feels like pencil levels of scratchy. Is this normal? Is it because the nib is fine instead of medium or what-have-you? Does it have something to do with the wetness of the ink?
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Aug 13, 2021 03:56
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:54 |
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Conversely, I use a Lamy Safari with a fine nib all day every day at work and it's perfectly fine? I've also got a medium which I don't use quite so much and it's also nice and smooth and perfectly serviceable.
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Jan 25, 2022 19:23
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 Wonder Pens ships very quickly, or at least, it does if you live an hour away from them! Of course, I happened to just fill up my one empty pen the other day so it'll be a while before I can try this out, but I'm very excited to give it a shot, as well as the little sampler of Ajisai.
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Jan 28, 2022 00:13
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So yesterday I impulsively picked up this metal-bodied fountain pen with a hooded nib that Chapters had for $25, and I inked it with a sample of Iroshizuku Ajisai I got from Wonder Pens last week and, uh, am I crazy here or is the colour almost exactly the same as plain old Lamy blue?
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Feb 6, 2022 17:27
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The iridescent pearl Sport is really interesting me but I find the general shape of the Sport to be so very weird. How is it to write with?
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Mar 15, 2022 03:01
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I'm sort of curious, are vendors like Esybuy on Etsy legit? I don't know a lot about most of the brands they feature but their stuff looks nice. Are knock-offs of Jinhao or Moonman common?
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Apr 2, 2022 06:46
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So on the weekend my lovely GF who has found that she'd also like to get into fountain pens decided we would go to Wonder Pens in Toronto as a part of a larger shopping trip. I've ordered from them before and found their service to be fast and efficient and very well-packaged and the store was lovely as well. The lady at the counter made some suggestions to my GF in terms of what she'd like in a starter pen, and she came away happy with a Lamy Safari in Terra Red. We also got some inks! We both really like the colour selection from Ferris Wheel Press, I've found their inks to perform nicely and it's nice to support a local manufacturer. She got herself a bottle of Bathurst St Blue and Roaring Black, and I got myself two bottles of Iroshizuku in Ama-iro and Ina-ho. The Ina-ho I was mostly interested in because it's been discontinued, so I figured if I wanted to try it and didn't like it I could sell it later probably. It's a very unique colour! So here's our whole collection, which lives in the little cubbies of our antique secretary desk:  Back row: Iroshizuku Ama-iro and Ina-ho. Middle: FWP Moss Park Green, Mirror Mirror of Moraine, Sunlit Jade (glorious colour), Bathurst St. Blue, Roaring Black, Book keeper's Brass, and Stroke of Midnight. Front: FWP charger set - this is three small sample bottles of their Twilight Garden collection, which is Dusk in Bloom, Edwards Gardens (superb), and Sparkling Champagne. There's also a bottle of Parker Quink in black and some ink from Dryden Designs in orange which I got to make up free shipping on an Amazon order. I'm not super wild about the orange. And a tiny sampler of Iroshizuku Ajisai which is very lovely but also very similar, I think, to plain old Lamy Blue. I've got two Safaris in white and turquoise and also this nifty little hooded nib pen I got from Chapters which tends to write a little wet but just looks so good.
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Apr 11, 2022 22:59
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She got it in a fine nib and filled it with Roaring Patina Black. She seems to like it! I tried out the Ina-ho and it's quite lovely!
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Apr 13, 2022 04:03
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I could buy that he maybe didn't know the gross thing where anti-semites think Jews have horns, it's not necessarily common knowledge, but when you rebrand the ink and change its label to this: What I circled pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
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May 11, 2022 13:37
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Ok, well I just saw this on a r/fountainpens post on the subject and laughed pretty hard.
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May 11, 2022 14:24
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Unrelated to Noodler's and gross libertarian poo poo (lol all libertarian poo poo is gross), the GF and I put in an order with Ferris Wheel Press on Sunday and the goods arrived on Tuesday afternoon. We got four bottles of ink (Open Sea Atrium, Moonlit Jade, Magical Metropolis, and Tokyo Bay Blue), and I also ordered a pair of their Carousel pens, because I was curious how they were. The GF doesn't know about those yet but when she gets here today she'll get to choose which one she wants. I inked one with Open Sea Atrium and the other with Moonlit Jade. Both colours are gorgeous, but I am enchanted with the Open Sea Atrium - it has such a lovely turquoise colour and that golden sparkle is amazing! It's a bit paler than Mirror Mirror of Moraine.  Glittery anything is hard to photograph but I did my best in these close-ups:   As for the pens: gonna be real, they feel kind of cheap. The nib is cute and I like the colours of the plastic but it feels kind of insubstantial. They cost $33 CAD each although I will point out that they come with a converter, and the converter has a little glass ball inside which I assume is to help agitate the ink. Considering that I seem to really go for glittery ink, that's probably a good feature. They do feel a bit short, as you can see here in this photo with a Lamy Safari for scale: 
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May 11, 2022 21:38
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sb hermit posted:If you got blunt tip syringes (sharp tip may be fine in the extreme short term but you should be real careful for obvious reasons) Sankis posted:It'd be pretty pointless to not sell them unless there was a reason. Har har! .....I'll show myself out.
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May 15, 2022 14:26
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Yo so two weeks ago I got a Wonder Pens order and I am loving my fancy new Kaweco Iridescent Pearl Sport. It writes so nice and smoothly and the pearl effect looks great! I'm just using the supplied cartridge for now but once that's used up I'm going to try cleaning it out and refilling it with something else. I also got some samples of Shin-Ryoku and Chiku-Rin which I'm excited to try out, as well as Diamine Red Dragon, Honey Burst, and Terracotta (I thought my GF might want to try matching ink to her terracotta red Lamy Safari). I'm trying out the Honey Burst and not gonna lie I'm finding it to be an awfully dry ink.
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Jun 29, 2022 23:45
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 I got an order in from Wonder Pens! They managed to get in some of the 2019 limited edition Lamy Safaris - I already had one of the turquoise ones but my girlfriend wanted one of her own and I wanted to get the cool mango one so I figured we may as well get the purple one as well. We're trying to just get samples of ink now, but the bottles for Dominant Industry just looked so cool we had to get one.  I've also ordered a few cheap Jinhaos to give out to some friends in one of my D&D groups - I'm going to ink them with character-appropriate inks and see how that goes over. One of them got everybody character-appropriate dice a while ago and I want to return the favour.
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Aug 6, 2022 00:39
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In the event anyone tried out the Ferris Wheel Press Carousel pen and found it less robust than anticipated, they are trying a thing:Ferris Wheel Press posted:Hello! The Carousel I got as a surprise for my girlfriend ended up getting a crack in the barrel and they replaced it almost immediately when I wrote to them, and I assume that's how I ended up on the distribution list for this e-mail. I found that mine works much better with non-glittery ink, which is a bit of a shame because FWP has some gorgeous sparkly inks and it would be nice if their own pen could handle their own inks (regular ink is just fine though, I've got Diamine Earl Grey in there right now and it's great). Admittedly I went for the fine nib and fine nibs can sometimes be picky with glittery ink.
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Nov 18, 2022 18:31
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In the event anyone was wondering: it is, in fact, possible to fill a TWSBI Eco from one of those narrow-necked Ferris Wheel Press ink bottles. I've got their Stroke of Midnight in there right now and watching that gold and silver glitter move around in the barrel is the coolest goddamned thing.
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Dec 13, 2022 20:31
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I am evidently extremely basic, but what I use for plain old black is a bottle of Parker Quink. It seems to be ok?
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Jan 16, 2023 19:22
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Kerbtree posted:Nothing wrong with that, in the grand scheme of things. Conveniently my girlfriend got a bottle of FWP Roaring Patina Black! I feel the glitter is a bit subtle, but it is there.
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Jan 17, 2023 15:43
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I've got one I got at the bookstore that has an enamelled or lacquered brass body and it looks great and writes nicely except for also being very prone to clogging for some reason.
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Feb 2, 2023 02:56
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I've got the Sport in the iridescent pearl and really enjoy it - I like how it's small enough that I can stick it in my pocket and also it looks really pretty. Re: brown inks, the only browns I've tried are Iroshizuku Ina-ho which I think is discontinued, Dominant Industry November Leaves (similar to Ina-ho but a bit paler, or at least in my Gf's TWSBI Eco) and Ferris Wheel Press' Writing Desk, which is a fairly nice brown that seems to have a greenish sheen on fancy paper. I don't notice it on regular printer paper or loose-leaf, but I definitely saw it on some Clairfontaine. Very cool effect.
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Apr 12, 2023 17:38
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I like FWP's inks, they have fun colours and they often have glitter in them and the bottles and boxes are pretty. Also they're a Canadian company and I like to buy local when possible. That said, the Carousel pen didn't wow me and I haven't used mine for a bit. It's not a bad pen, it just doesn't make me as happy as, say, my Kaweco Sport does. I don't really see the point of that inkwell they're putting out, but I almost never use dip pens so I'm not in the target market. As for Noodler's, the only ink of his I've used is Ottoman Rose which we got in a sampler mystery pack. It was a decent ink but I wouldn't go out of my way for it and I suspect the operator is a total CHUD.
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May 12, 2023 15:35
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I filled my TWSBI Eco with FWP's Open Sea Atrium and good Lord it's lovely. It's hard to photograph the glittery movement of the ink but it's incredible, I assure you.
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May 21, 2023 19:59
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It really is a great red. When my sample bottle runs out and I feel like more red I'll probably be getting more of it.
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May 26, 2023 02:07
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Oh, that mother-of-pearl inlay is gorgeous. I could never justify the price of that sort of pen, probably (lol my most expensive one is a TWSBI Eco) but I will certainly appreciate photos!
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Aug 16, 2023 12:57
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HarmB posted:This is very generous of you! Not just you! I've got 3 Safaris, a Kaweco Sport, and a TWSBI Eco that are my regular rotation of pens and then a weird hooded nib one I got at the bookstore that looks fabulous but is hideously wet and has no seal to speak of so ink evaporates like nobody's business, so I rarely use it. Sometimes I look at some neat Kaigelu pens online or think of getting a pretty Benu or something but really I don't know that I really need anything else. I may get another Eco at some point, they've got some fun colours, I dunno.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:40
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So last night I was cleaning out MY GIRLFRIEND'S Kaweco Sport because she'd let ink dry out in it and while I was trying to draw the last of it out of the feed with a paper towel held against the nib the entire feed just....slid out? I had a momentary freak-out, rinsed more elderly ink out of it (R&K Solferino is a fabulous colour but oh my is it persistent) and then slid it back in to the section, where it seems to have stayed. Is this....normal?
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Aug 24, 2023 13:21
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I considered some entry-level Noodler's pen when I was window-shopping for my first non-disposable fountain pen, and ultimately settled on a white Lamy Safari, and I really feel like I dodged a bullet there. Having to gently caress around with a pen new out of the box to get it to work right sounds hellish. Like, is "Oh, it's made so you have to tinker around with it" just an excuse for lovely manufacturing? We got a sample vial of Ottoman Rose in one of those Wonder Pens ink sample blind bags and it's a serviceable ink I guess?
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Aug 25, 2023 15:43
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SixteenShells posted:I've never used any Rohrer & Klingner inks (or any iron gall inks in general), but I have my eye on this stuff - anyone have experience with this line? I like the color and value water resistance. I'm thinking of it as an eventual replacement for my bottle of Noodler's BBK. I haven't used their iron gall ink, but their Solferino and Konigsblau are both very nice.
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Aug 29, 2023 17:55
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This may be because I'm not a very clever person when it comes to things like scheming or deception, but how exactly would a fountain pen ink help to avoid cheque fraud?
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Sep 5, 2023 19:41
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I have three Safaris I use regularly and the one I end up using the most is pretty wet and not a fine nib at all despite the etching on the nib and I kind of love it actually. It just feels very smooth and pleasant to write with. I should probably try it with a drier ink - I've got Iroshizuku Ama-iro in there right now.
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Sep 13, 2023 14:43
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I use glittery inks in my Safaris all the time, and if it ever seems like the glitter is causing problems I just slide the nib off, rinse it out and I'm good to go. I find that some glittery FWP inks are a little tricky to get started with but once I do the nib thing it's clear sailing.
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Oct 18, 2023 12:56
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GF wants us to go to the Toronto fountain pen show thingy this weekend which I think will probably be pretty fun and perhaps also a little bit expensive.
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Oct 26, 2023 17:33
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Haha well I somehow ran out of ink in two pens while taking some notes at work yesterday (admittedly they were almost empty) and while I usually refill right away because NEW COLOURS AW YEAH I thiiiiink I will wait until we've been to the pen show. No reason!
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Oct 27, 2023 12:57
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sb hermit posted:twsbi eco is real classy Really considering the indigo with bronze trim. It just looks so good. The Scriptus pen show was pretty fun, although it was absolutely packed which made looking at things kind of difficult. We got some new inks, something from Troublemaker and something from uh Wearingul, and also that Wonder Pens exclusive Tuna Grey and the new Tuna With Olives. My girlfriend also went absolutely nuts on sample vial mystery bags (20 new samples!) which will definitely not fill up every spare cubby in the secretary desk, no siree. I'm trying to figure out how to get her to actually USE these things...
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Oct 31, 2023 16:20
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I thought the Vista was a Safari, just a clear one?
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Nov 27, 2023 05:07
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Just how much fiddling do they require, anyway? Like, what counts as fiddling? Unrelated to the above, but I stumbled across Mitasanahodo, an ink manufacturer in Japan who bottles it in cut-glass bottles and I am in love! Now if only I could find out how to actually order such prettily-packaged ink...
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Jan 19, 2024 17:22
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NGL that all sounds awful. I prefer my pen-fiddling to involve figuring out which of the too many inks we have that I want to use next! I can pull the nib off a Safari to get glitter out of it but that's about as far as I go.
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Jan 19, 2024 17:49
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I can't post a picture because they hosed with that functionality on the Awful app but I just put some Wearingeul Wayfarer in my TWSBI Eco and holy poo poo, it's got loving holographic blue glitter in it. I am enchanted.
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Feb 11, 2024 18:55
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stealie72 posted:Just looked at a 1940 Sears catalog (the earliest searchable I could find online) and the cheapest Parker FP (a Duofold) is $3.50, or $77 in today's money. Well I'm interested to learn that that ridiculous Bic Pens For Women thing from a few years ago wasn't as new as I thought it was.
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Feb 21, 2024 18:50
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:54 |
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I've got a notebook from Wal-Mart I use as a journal and the feathering is wildly inconsistent from page to page.
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Mar 5, 2024 16:00
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