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Bit of a strange question: what are some pens that have a metal-to-metal connection between the grip and the body (i.e., it's metal threading on metal, no plastic involved) and have a range of different nibs available? A heavy, metal-bodied pen with no plastic threads (they always strip or crack eventually) and a fine italic nib is the writing instrument I'm looking for. I've effectively made one of these myself by machining down and transplanting the feed system from a Rotring Artpen (which has five or six different available nibs) into the grip of a Newton with a damaged feed, but I'm wondering what else might be out there?
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Nov 19, 2014 01:08
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The main concern I have is that the grip isn't a plastic piece that threads into a metal body. Ever since I first started using a fountain pen in the fourth grade I've found that those inevitably get stripped and shredded up after a couple of years. Metal into metal, perfect (the Rotring I love so much is all brass). Plastic into plastic, usually fine because one side isn't significantly harder than the other, but I like the heft of a metal pen.
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Nov 19, 2014 06:23
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vkeios posted:p.s. anyone have any suggestions for short international cartridge that don't have the colored end to indicate what color they came with? Thats really annoying me since I've obviously don't have blue in this cart anymore. I have a bunch of boxes of Rotring cartridges I got from a place that was going out of business and they're all just milky white when empty.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:21
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Yeah in other countries that's called a "brokerage fee" and it (supposedly) pays the salary of the guy who sits there handling the paperwork and calculating the dues.
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Dec 24, 2014 22:51
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How does the Lamy 2000 (and other vanishing point pens) keep ink from coming out the end when the nib is retracted? Are they safe enough to carry in your shirt pocket? Upside down or nib-up only?
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Jan 6, 2015 22:28
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Due to this thread I got a cheap box of (6) Pilot Varsity on Amazon, and gave some out amongst the larger gifts, and kept a few for me. Just wanted to feel out this whole fountain pen thing before I get too deep into it. If I manage to use one of mine enough to run it out, I'll go buy something nicer with a good seal for travel; the Kaweco Sport seems pretty awesome. My father has an Al-Sport with the fine italic nib, and my sister has a Lilliput in brass. The Al-sport is a lovely pen -- the all-metal everything (it's aluminum) is really nice and it's balanced very well (with the cap posted, as intended.) I think I might get one for myself someday. The lilliput is tiny -- when capped, it's almost exactly the same size as a cigarette, and not a king-size either. The cap screws onto the back and makes it about the length of an unposted normal pen, but it's still half the diameter. It suits her well because she's a very small person but if you're a big goony man with fat hands I imagine it would be like writing with a toothpick. Also, while the Al-sport can take one of the little squeezy converters, the Lilliput is so short it can literally only handle international-short cartridges, so if you want custom inks you'll have to fill up empties with a syringe. Both of them write very nicely, though, and the features of being all-metal and having a wide variety of available interchangeable nibs and feeds are rare enough to recommend them on that basis alone.
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Jan 11, 2015 20:34
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404notfound posted:Also it looks like a tampon So you have never in your life seen a tampon then (it's way too small and entirely the wrong proportions) TapTheForwardAssist posted:I've got pretty small hands; for a long while I used a Fisher Space Pen bullet-type ballpoint, and I still have a Pico (extremely tiny/skinny ballpoint) on my keychain, and in extremis have taken lengthy notes with it. I also have a chrome bullet space pen and the Lilliput is almost exactly the same size, both capped and posted. Alder posted:I don't mind plastic myself but I know there's some die-hard fans who loathe the very idea and prefer metal but what I really want to know is how do they tolerate writing w/such a heavy item for notes over time? I find it's actually less tiring to use a heavier pen. It's not like it's a great deal of extra mass, but the weight helps keep the nib on the paper through the more twisty strokes even if you're just barely touching the pen. Obviously the balance has to be right, and with most of my metal pens I don't write with them posted because they get really top-heavy. Also the weight is really satisfying. It's like picking up any other well-made hand tool, like a revolver or a socket wrench or whatever, where the unexpected weight makes you you go "ooh, wow, this is serious." I have a lot of good plastic pens too, but for general use I keep coming back to my solid-brass Rotring Newton (with a new internal feed and nib section I machined out of an ArtPen because they never made EF nibs for the Newton/600 series). Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 22:11
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blowfish posted:I never would've thought the Noodler's guy would name something after not-American history Like Ottoman Rose or Tiananmen or Zhivago or Nikita or Rome Burning or Qin Shi Huang? I know what you mean, though. Mikl posted:Kinda weird question: are glass fountain pens a thing? I see no reason why a full-glass fountain pen, except for the nib (and maybe the feed?), wouldn't work. The nib needs to flex slightly and the feed is full of tiny little channels, and I think both would be too fragile to use if made out of glass. It's also challenging to make fine threads in glass so you'd have trouble if you tried to make the grip and body both glass and thread them into each other. That said, my sister has a pen with a glass body and cap, but a standard plastic grip section and a little metal insert at the bottom of the body for it to thread into, so that much is certainly a thing, yes.
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Jan 11, 2015 22:52
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Not sure if this already got mentioned in the thread, but there's a Kickstarter for a small all-metal pocket FP. Closes on Thursday or so: I don't see any reason to get this over a Kaweco Liliput, unless you really like the design for some reason.
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Jan 14, 2015 08:46
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you might just not be putting it far enough down in the ink. Does it fill up with water if you operate the mechanism while it's completely submerged in the sink?
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Jan 17, 2015 19:43
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Noctone posted:Using a fountain pen for technical drawing is kind of like trying to stick a square peg in a round hole. You're way better off with something specifically suited for the purpose - Copic, Sakura, Prismacolor, Staedtler, Marvy, Rotring, etc. all make excellent technical pens. Uh, Rapidographs are absolutely fountain pens  And Rotring's nibs are very good for technical drawing. They're all steel and people complain about them as being like "writing with a nail" but for that reason they do a fine job where you need precision. Get an EF Artpen to try it out.
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Jan 29, 2015 10:42
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 ABS plastic is used in literally billions of products
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Dec 14, 2015 04:35
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Somebody tell me in 164 pages of this thread that they've done this too. That's pretty impressive, I have to say. Kind of like managing to put new tires on your car without removing the old ones.
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Jan 22, 2016 19:26
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JEBOman posted:Where are Noodler's insane ramblings? Dr. Bronner's is kind enough to put it on the bottles. His blog has the best stuff. http://noodlersink.com/general/new-bernanke-inks/ quote:Bernanke Blue and Bernanke Black were introduced in part due to two forces of frustration. The economy destroyed a large customer that once upon a time and over many years sold a custom ink for those people who write OVER the words with their hand. This ink is incredibly smear resistant…and on some paper grades it can not be made to smear even a fractional second after writing the line. So, Noodler’s wanted to bring the ink into greater general distribution at the request of many customers. This would address the first frustration in that so many left handed writers believe the fountain pen is “just not for them” – this is NOT the case…as can be shown with a 1 minute demonstration using this ink (for a longer demonstration…see the video of this ink). Haven't yet figured out the source of his weird obsession with imperial China. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jan 26, 2016 |
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Jan 26, 2016 22:49
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grack posted:I'm not at all angry. I'm honestly trying to figure out why people get up in arms about a $1 or $2 fountain pen. So what if it's a copy? Is Parker really losing sleep over a pen that they stopped making in 1972? Or Lamy over pens that are rarely if ever sold in the same markets? "Rip off" is a term that is never, ever used in a positive or even neutral situation. It's universally negative. Yet, it comes up time and time again in conversations like this, and almost without fail it's about Chinese manufacturers even though everyone else happily copies competitor's products in this industry and many, many others. This is a really ridiculous post and you are a bad person for having made it. Fountain pens are cool and good and who gives a poo poo where they come from as long as they're ending up in my house!
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Feb 1, 2016 04:58
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I'm getting two Noodler's inks whenever Pen Boutique gets off their butts: I'm partial to Heart of Darkness, personally. I use it in pretty much all my pens for both writing and sketching.
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Feb 2, 2016 11:47
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Baystate blue is pretty, but it's a gigantic pain in the rear end and I don't know why people put it in everyday pens. I've never had any problems with Heart of Darkness.
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Feb 7, 2016 07:43
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I have a TWSBI with an italic nib and it's a little dry. Requires some pressure to write well. (Using Heart of Darkness, which is fine in all my other pens). How can I make it wetter?
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Feb 10, 2016 07:29
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Antietam quote:It is the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with a combined tally of dead, wounded, and missing at 22,717 Hmm
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Feb 17, 2016 19:03
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grack posted:Guys, guys. I think I may have a problem What kind of Rotring is that? Also, thoughts on Noodler's Nib Creaper? I'm interested in a pen with a flexible nib but I dunno where to start.
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Feb 18, 2016 03:49
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I learned to write in elementary school with a Sheaffer NoNonsense with an italic F nib. I still have my original pen from close to twenty years ago and it still works great reloaded with Heart of Darkness. I don't like the Sheaffer cartridge mounting system very much. It's strange -- you put the cartridge in the pen body and reassemble, and the feed punctures a hole in the end of the cartridge as you screw it down. I suspect that it's more prone to leaking than other methods but eh, it works, and I don't remember staining my clothes as a kid. The screw-on cap is nice and the pen is very light and durable (all plastic). You can probably get one on eBay really cheap because they're basically student pens. http://www.penhero.com/PenGallery/Sheaffer/SheafferNoNonsense.htm I don't think they make the actual NoNonsense any more, but the Viewpoint looks like something similar. Learn a nice chancery italic -- that's what I had to use in school. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 07:26
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Oh, okay. Learn a different script, one that makes the lineweight variations more apparent. This is essentially what I learned, and what I still use when I'm writing "nicely":  It can be written semi-cursive if you make some minor changes (e.g. the lowercase e needs to be written in two strokes, so you skip the second stroke and go back to fill it in later like dotting an i) Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 07:51
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Well sure, but did any schoolchildren even use them? I'm just so perplexed. I think I only ever saw a fountain pen in use once in my life. I think one kid got one was a gift in elementary school, tried use it, and it completely exploded on them. I wrote with pencils until the third grade, and then started using a fountain pen in fourth. All my schoolwork was expected to be done in pen, except for math problems for which we were allowed to use pencils.
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Feb 20, 2016 07:02
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My Man Shran posted:I'd say, for a lot of them at least, it's less about nostalgia than it is status. You see a lot of that "old world upper class" poo poo in the community that basically amounts to 40 year old men larping a downton abbey character. There seems to be a serious market for expensive fountain pens in China especially. While I lived in Shanghai, a giant new super department store opened up. Because of Chinese numerological superstitions, where 6s and 8s are very good, it had 8 floors and a total floor space of 68,888 square meters. On the very first day, they had a single bejeweled fountain pen being sold for RMB 888,888 (about $135,000 USD). It was the first thing sold.
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Feb 20, 2016 20:31
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Just refill the cartridges with a syringe like everyone else.
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Mar 3, 2016 18:58
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Solkanar512 posted:I thought it was supposed to be raw metal. I was actually looking at andonizing chemicals - a co-worker of mine sculpts/casts metal art. You can't anodize copper.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:25
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If I could only have one machine tool, it would be a screw-cutting engine lathe. You can do an astonishing amount of stuff with one, including many things that are impossible with any other tool. Get a lathe, a drill press, a grinding wheel, a set of files, and a hacksaw and you've got a well-equipped machine shop right there. Look at the 7x10 lathe website for a lot of good information.
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Mar 14, 2016 07:05
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NeurosisHead posted:Any of you guys machinists with input on Central Machinery v. Grizzly? Grizzly's better IMO, but the specific tool you're looking at (the Harbor Freight 7x10 I expect?) is a good product for its price.
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Mar 15, 2016 07:47
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You can always try improving it by pressing down on it with fairly significant force, slightly spreading the tines of the nib, then letting it spring back, and repeating that until you get a little more ink flow. Works for me. If it's obviously a counterfeit though I'd demand a refund and/or dispute the charge.
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Nov 3, 2016 04:17
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What sort of designs is she a fan of? Sleek and modern? Cute and fun? Traditional and luxurious? There are a number of good options in that price range, with style being the main differentiating feature. Off the top of my head, look at the Lamy Logo and Al-star, the various Kaweco Sport models, and the TWSBI ECO and Diamond. The Kaweco Liliput ($50-80) makes a great gift, IMO, because it's unusual and cute as well as being a good pen, but if you go that route be aware that it is really tiny. With the cap on it's about the size of a cigarette. My sister loves hers though. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 03:48
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Yeah but I mean you know whether your wife would prefer something like this or like this  right? Also all the ones I posted have varying body shapes, from slim and geometric to fat and round, designed for writing with or without the cap posted on the end, etc.
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Dec 22, 2016 05:00
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well then google pictures of the ones i've recommended and decide what you think is appropriate, they're all good pens. yeesh the two I just posted are a Pilot Kakuno, with the smiley face on the nib (about $12), and a Rotring 600 (no longer for sale, about $90-300 on eBay). A Rotring Newton (also not sold any more, similar price range) is a 600 without the knurls. The Lamy CP1 is a good pen in a similar-ish style to the 600 that costs about $80.
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Dec 22, 2016 05:32
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Lamy Safari is a good pen. I wish they took international cartridges instead of the Lamy-specific ones, so that I could use the zillions of international converters I have, but eh I suppose even a proprietary converter is only ten bucks or so.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:51
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Noodler's Heart of Darkness is a pure black ink, not a deep brown or blue or gray, with almost no shading, and my go-to for general usage. (I do a lot of technical pen work where you want the line to be as crisp and black as possible).
Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Feb 5, 2017 |
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Feb 5, 2017 01:27
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Stain them blue. Anything that ink touches will pick up a blue tinge either instantly or over time.
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Feb 5, 2017 05:24
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Rather than spinning my fountain pens, I work them through my fingers like you can do with a quarter. Try learning that one instead.
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Feb 5, 2017 23:45
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Trustworthy posted:What's the best kind of syringe to use for refilling Pilot cartridges, and can I buy one online? Amazon has tons of options. Or just ask the pharmacy for a blunt-tipped syringe, because it's obvious that you can't shoot up with that. Or just say it's for filling pens with ink you big baby, cause it's going to make them think you're a nerd, not some weird terrorist drug dealer
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Feb 18, 2017 18:21
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So, something I just learned: if you put a Platinum Preppy with the colored nib into an ultrasonic cleaner, it strips the coloring off the nib and leaves the bare stainless steel underneath. Not something I really care about seeing as it's a $4 pen but something to be aware of!
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Feb 18, 2017 21:58
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atholbrose posted:I know it's not quite the right animal, but recommending Diamine Oxblood for this endeavor is irresistible. Oxen and cows are the same animal.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:06
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What a guy, that Dare. Why is he coming into the fountain pen thread now? Where does he get the money to keep on doing this?
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Feb 26, 2017 06:33
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