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So I decided to splurge a little to celebrate getting a new, better job and got myself a Lamy Safari. My first fountain pen! Along with a cartridge converter and Iroshizuku tsuki-yo ink. Gorgeous colour, and the pen looks very distinctive too! I'm starting to see why people would risk going broke over this stuff now lol It also writes like a charm* though I definitely need to get used to refilling frequently. Ballpoints really have us spoiled on that regard. *with a medium nib at least. I got a fine, and I do feel a large difference. Cursive is a lot easier, which is very good for my daily note taking. Definitely smudging a lot less, and the thin clear lines make my handwriting look serviceable. but it does feel much scratchier on the page surface, whereas the medium just glided effortlessly. Is this to be expected? It has to be noted that I am not writing on top tier paper a lot of the time, so that could be a factor as well. Though I also notice a lot less 'ghosting' with the fine nib even on the mid/low tier paper I have at the office
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Apr 24, 2023 15:50
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Fair enough, spending hundreds on a pen is still something that's way off for me, so I'm not too worried about that. Though I can confirm now that I'm home, trying out the fine nib on my really nice notebook, it is just about as effortless as the medium, so paper quality definitely making a big difference there.
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Apr 24, 2023 18:18
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Visiting the pen store last week, shopping for a pen I wouldn't regret bringing to the office, I also decided to grab a Sailor Hi-ace Neo Calligraphy, which I garner is their very roundabout way of saying it's a stub nib. Stubs seem pretty cool! Even just in normal writing it makes my godawful cursive look somewhat swaggy so I count that as a win. And they included an instruction sheet for a couple of calligraphy alphabets and since I wanted to get into calligraphy for a while now it seemed like a no-brainer. I was also able to find out that Sailor used to offer downloadable printable practice sheets for 3 different calligraphy alphabets, so I hunted those down using the internet wayback machine and got myself started with those too. Although, in retrospect, a 1mm stub might not be a good choice to start learning Gothic script, just because of how many turns and angle changes the letters seem to call for and how little space I have to do those in. That's my feeling coming in totally green to the hobby though, so it might just be there's something I'm missing. Italic meanwhile is simple and elegant and perfectly approachable to a total newbie like me so I'm doing that right now. It is very satisfying and a somewhat meditative experience, and I'm thankful to the first few pages in this thread for giving me that final push to get started, although it might be a while before I produce decent lettering. Might want to try a larger stub for different alphabets too! Though probably not a whole-rear end pen just for the larger nib, I might try to get the Lamy stubs for my Safari. Has anyone tried those?
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May 14, 2023 07:43
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Dad Hominem posted:All you have to do is write bigger Well, I was using practice sheets with pre-made guidelines, and with the alphabet pre-printed in order to trace it over. I definitely can try upping the proportions on a clean sheet and see if it gets any easier to get those strokes down. Sankis posted:Look into Pilot Parallel calligraphy pens. You can get the set of four fairly cheaply and they're recommended as a good, cheap set for a lot of blackletter newbs. Thank you, I'll keep an eye on a set of those pens, they seem pretty cool! They might be good to try as I get deeper into the hobby. Although for the moment I feel like I'm just experimenting with what makes me curious, like the stub pens. I'm kind of restraining my enthusiasm a bit here, as I don't want to start buying a bunch of pens I barely use, so I'm going to focus on enjoying what I bought and then see about expanding from there 
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May 15, 2023 14:54
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Crain posted:Oh boy I've blundered into a new hobby. This is me about a month ago Crain posted:At least I can convince myself it's a good excuse to "improve my handwriting" lol. No joke, I do a lot of journaling, getting a fountain pen has made it greatly more pleasurable and I actually started to care about my handwriting now that I don't associate it with pain and cramps and something to just get it over with. Wish I'd thought of it as I prepared exams in uni. Also yeah there's so much stuff I see and want to try i have to restrain myself and try to take it step by step. Maybe draw a roadmap of sorts.
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May 15, 2023 18:15
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My M nib on the Safari just about glides on the page. The only smoother pen I have is an old Delta of my dad's we dug up recently, but I don't carry that daily obviously. The Lamy F nib offers a bit more scratchiness but is pretty compatible with the lovely paper I have at work and is legit fairly smooth on that as well. Doesn't bring out the full depth of Tsuki-yo though. My newer candidate for daily carry is a Sailor Profit Jr, which looks pretty nice, is pocketable and the supposedly MF nib writes thinner than the Lamy F. Pretty nice results on office paper, but I feel like I need to press at least a bit to prevent skips. Descending cursive letters especially seem to offend it. Welp, hope I don't break it.
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May 16, 2023 09:44
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Chip McFuck posted:Japanese pens generally tend to run about one nib size smaller than their western counterparts, so a Japanese fine will write more like a western extra-fine, a medium will write like a fine, and so forth. There's some speculation that this is why Japanese inks tend to flow wetter as the small nib sizes write better with an ink that'll flow easily. I had read about the Japanese nibs and figured the lower-end pens would fit my needs of a) writing well, even pleasantly, on most kinds of paper and b) not being worth shedding copious tears (although €30 is still a significant sum to just lose) in case of loss/breakage I was still unprepared with how thin the Sailor FM actually is. But there not being an international frame of reference for nibs is good to know! I would never have figured it out and chalked it down to QA on single nibs otherwise.
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May 16, 2023 15:05
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That looks like amazing fun!
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May 21, 2023 19:10
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I can confirm, ink window on the safari owns. I can tell if I'm gonna run out today, sometimes if I flip it I can estimate how many days I got left. The Sailor writes absolutely wonderfully but having to unscrew the body to see how much juice I got left is a pain. Definitely want to get myself an Eco soon! 
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May 22, 2023 17:15
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Just loaded up a converter-ful of diamine red dragon. Basically arterial blood red, although a bit understated compared to what I was expecting (I wanted, like, real bright red). Feels like a color for poetry, or for some real spicy letters too, maybe in another time where letters were still in use. Processing a bunch of emotional stuff in my journals, it somehow feels like the right choice. It's very nice, and I'm happy with it as my choice for my first 'non-standard', not-for-official-use ink. I'm going to load it up on my stub pen next and do some italics on that. See if the more generous flow brings out more depth from the color.
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May 25, 2023 20:24
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Oh yeah absolutely, those are gorgeous. But my absolute first ever ink is the iroshizuku tsuki-yo I now write every day with, and I wanted to branch out a bit. The shopowner showed me a bunch of swatches when I was last there for inks and I was absolutely enamored with their purple/burgundy-ish yama budo and especially their bright orange yu-yake, but I know it would take me decades to get through a bottle. Evil of them to even show me, frankly. Putting the thoughts in my head.
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May 26, 2023 05:48
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Keetron posted:I'll make things worse for you and mention tsutsuji, which is a red-pink ink with a gold sheen. It writes very wet and sheen very lightly but it is very nice in use. Yama budo I bought a big bottle for after emptying the small one, very comfortable daily ink. Yu-yake is a light ink and writes surprisingly well for that color, many other yellowish inks I have tried tend to write dry. Thanks for the suggestions, tsutsuji looks amazing; although, if I had to choose another blue Iroshizuku, I'd go for asa gao. However for my next I'm gonna look at bright green or a teal (to go with my petrol lamy). Guitar's brilliant mint looks pretty nice.
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May 26, 2023 13:50
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I did take the advice I got upthread to actually draw with my pen and I spent a very pleasant hour's wait for a medical exam just doing that. Sailor's MF nib lends itself well and I had a lot of fun. 10/10, would otherwise have spent that time being insanely bored. I'm rubbish at drawing and will likely never show anyone the results, but it was satisfying and I still think it came out well for someone who doesn't draw at all. So that's cool
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Jun 3, 2023 10:40
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I'll be going to Berlin in a couple weeks, anyone got recommendations for a cool pen shop to visit?
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Jun 10, 2023 07:15
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I got some Kaweco Palm Green and was unsatisfied with the ink flow and how it looked on the page. That prompted me to switch my safari back to an M nib and it looks gorgeous now. Exactly the green I wanted. I also realized just how much ink I'm pissing out with the M nib lol. One converter's worth will last a month of journaling and unrelated office note-taking on the F. I think one converter's worth can be expected to last the week, just barely, at the same rate, on the M now. Hey I need to make a dent in my ink supply anyway so I can buy more!
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Jul 3, 2023 18:01
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Yeah, it's incredibly satisfying. And springing a couple extra bucks for nicer paper is worth it. I have seen the light.
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Jul 3, 2023 20:34
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Yeah if I don't write real big now a bunch of my cursive letters become useless squiggles.
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Jul 4, 2023 18:15
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Is it just me or some inks feel a lot more generous (for lack of a better word) when used on the finer nibs? The Sailor black cartridges that came with my new pen felt I think incredibly smooth, it laid a nice and shiny line and the black color felt p. strong and deep. I've been loading in tsuki-yo by converter since, and while it doesn't feel bad, I do think it feels different to write with. Not to mention it looks like I lose quite a bit of depth of color (kinda duh, I know) Is this a thing? Like some inks come out better or worse depending on nib size?
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Jul 25, 2023 16:21
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DurianGray posted:Yes, some inks play a lot better (or worse) in certain nib sizes and have different flow properties. Good to know. Will have to keep in mind which pen I want to get my inks for, which I didn't expect but makes sense. Thanks!
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Jul 25, 2023 20:38
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DurianGray posted:You also might be aware of this already, but the paper you use can make a pretty big difference too, especially with how some inks will actually look when they dry, whether they feather or not, etc. You can get different effects with slower-drying paper vs. more absorbent paper, for instance. I noticed this on an Oxford notebook I got for my everyday use, which is pretty good quality and fountain pen friendly. The paper is very bright white, won't let ink bleed, no feathering. Color comes out totally different over there. Heath posted:Generally speaking, a finer tip will do better on less absorbent paper. Tomoe River is good, but I like Rhodia for a nice balance between cost and FP friendliness. Oh yes, that was why I was initially recommended to use fine tips and possibly use Japanese pens, since they perform well on most paper and I would have initially balked at getting the pricier, higher quality notebooks everyone keeps talking about. I have yet to try Rhodia, but I am getting myself a Midori notebook with my next haul, as soon as I run out of space in my current journal.
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Jul 26, 2023 10:44
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There are people in my particular field who use a fountain pen for the personal flair and I do recognize a fountain pen user when their paperwork comes up on my desk, but outside that they are staggeringly rare. An older colleague of mine, who grew up in the times when they were still ubiquitous, was extremely surprised at seeing mine and asked where do I get my ink and isn't it horribly expensive? So yeah the ballpoint pen revolution really did a number on our collective approach to writing. I learned to write with ballpoints in school and continued throughout my adulthood and what I understood very early on was that writing is about pain. Wish it hadn't been.
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Aug 6, 2023 18:30
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That looks awesome! Congrats! shame on Mr. D for passing up on such a fine pen
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Aug 15, 2023 17:39
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So my dad dug up an old Omas of his, pen from the '90s at a glance. Unfortunately he left an old pelikan turquoise cartridge to dry in it and so far I've been bathing the nib and flushing the feed for 3 days and still get blue-ish water lol. I can't really tell what model is it because I don't know jack about old pens, all I know it's a slim all metal pen that used to have a polished metal effect (that's all scratched and crumbled away mostly now) Anyway it looks pretty cool and I can't wait to try it. He also dug up some old pelikan cartridges that surprisingly seem to have a lot of ink in them still. I'm kinda tempted because from the way it colors the water it looks like an absolutely gorgeous ink hahah Keep it in mind for my next ink haul
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Aug 23, 2023 15:46
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CK07 posted:I strongly support any and all etc etc. You came to the right place for validation! Congrats, that's like a perfect use case for an italic and a cool ink like that. Also know that someone will notice, they will know and appreciate. Also you will likely be enlisted for all future card writing exercises now
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Aug 26, 2023 07:00
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Finally got a Pilot 78g+ (F) that I ordered off aliexpress a while ago now. I really wanted to try a Japanese pen, and since this came with a converter and a "super quality" nib (same as on the prera possibly?) for like €20 I couldn't resist. As an aside, I still can't believe how many companies will nickel and dime the poo poo out of you on converters and proprietary cartridge systems. Still, the pen has basically sold me completely on Pilot. I loaded it up with pelikan 4001 violet (I have been told later a 4001 might not behave well on very fine nibs due to it being designed for very generous European pens), and the pen just glides effortlessly on the paper. It puts out a super thin line but the color still comes out very nicely. I also like how fine the F actually is. I might actually be an EF man. I don't know yet, there's so much experimenting to do! Anyway, if I'm ever splurging for a "precious" pen, I think Pilot might be a very good candidate.
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Aug 29, 2023 20:49
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So my dad's old Omas either has a problem with the seal and/or the feed is hosed: the ink is always dried out and I need to jump start it every time with water. It might also be the case that pelikan turquoise just isn't a very good ink for it in particular. I will try switching it out with some herbin eclat de saphir i have lying around, and see where this goes.
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Sep 6, 2023 07:45
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Trying different fine nibs in different pens has convinced me, 3 months later, that the lamy F I bought in my initial pen enthusiasm was actually a faulty one. I thought maybe the drier inks I used in it weren't doing it any favours, but no it just seems plain defective. It will just not let enough ink through to last a whole word, and is offended by descending and ascending letters especially. It is positively miserly with the line it lays down unless I apply pressure. Much like my first cheap Sailor, which I also found to have its feed all extruded wrong and with the fins half glued together. Only found this out when nib and feed just spontaneously disassembled in my hands one day as I went to clean it. Sucks for the money lost due to inexperience. Had I known I would've complained/got them replaced. Lessons learned and all, probably everyone makes mistakes in the beginning.
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Sep 12, 2023 20:12
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Velius posted:One of my all stars got irreparably clogged in the feed from Iroshizuku ink too which seems very sketchy. Yeah that was my clue that sealed the deal as well. A Fine nib that can't handle an iroshizuku and just barely lays any ink on the page? I was done. That plus getting that Pilot 78g that writes like a charm. I don't know if I want to try my hand at another Lamy F. I'll probably try something else for my next pen. As for inks, I already know I want a turquoise, a nice and bright one. I don't know if pelikan 4001 does well on finer nibs, but it is my standard of reference here. And I'm also eyeing up some brown. Ancient copper looks so cool... God what a money sink.
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Sep 13, 2023 19:13
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god that pen looks gorgeous. Congrats on your new pen! Also that nib work looks real interesting. Would like to see one in action and try it one day.
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Sep 24, 2023 16:26
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While I'm not a fan personally of mechanical pencils, all of my family swears by Faber Castell. They make some nice beefy mechanical pencils, incredibly sturdy, and I used them throughout school
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Oct 5, 2023 05:38
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Yeah I got a Parallel in 3.8mm and I finally understand what I'm doing with calligraphy. Each line an airport runway's worth for me to figure out angle variations and gestures. Highly recommended.
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Oct 14, 2023 04:17
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Keetron posted:How does that work with regards to ink flow? Works for me so far! I've only tried Pilot's specially formulated ink in cartridges (which may or may not be the same as eg pilot black, I sincerely do not know), but as long as the nib in its entirety makes contact with the page, it will lay down a very consistent line. Which is impressive, as 3.8mm is absurdly wide. Performance may vary with different inks, but I will have that information once I try them.
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Oct 14, 2023 20:24
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Speaking of, I got a couple jinhaos because I wanted to get a knockabout pen that I won't be too bothered about it if it spontaneously disassembles like my last 2 candidates (a sailor pocket pen and a platinum plaisir). It must be something about me carrying them to work in a bag, although they are affixed to pen-holder slots. Also got a fude nib to try out the experience. The fude works perfectly and is great fun. I am learning to do the limited few Chinese characters I know with it and it definitely gives them flair. I recommend it! Of the other nibs, one works perfectly, one is a fine that writes satisfactorily, if a bit coarsely, and the other is an abomination against physics that will refuse to write, even when loaded with Sailor black ink. Supposedly a medium, it will lay down a barely visible gray line. Would it benefit from attempting to separate the tines a little using tools like suggested in the previous posts? Ultimate experience is: can't complain, even got a converter for each pen so welp. mortons stork fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Nov 3, 2023 |
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Nov 3, 2023 08:42
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Oh god, this thread is right. There are 823s going for ~€200 when sale price in my country is in the range of 380 - 400+ I see where the thread title comes from now
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Nov 7, 2023 15:39
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Chip McFuck posted:Sailor ink is my go-to when I want a wet ink. Flows really well and is incredibly well behaved. Yuki-akari from their four season line is one of my favorite blues, but you really can't go wrong with any of their inks. Sailor black was my first 'serious' ink and it is amazing, it makes my pens glide over the page like they were curling stones guided by miniature invisible sweepers. If a pen won't write with it, it's broke, it's a bit of a litmus test for me.
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Feb 11, 2024 13:03
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Yeah switching to a finer nib, esp. an Asian f or ef will clamp right down on ink consumption. You will be begging them to run out
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Jun 26, 2024 06:14
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Dolemite posted:Super helpful stuff! Yamadori looks so cool. If I weren't drowning in inks already I'd definitely give it a shot next. Also yeah every once in a while if I want to feel cool I try writing one of the few hanzi I know decently well, by dipping a fude nib into ink and man does it look nice. Not even a calligraphic script, just doing the basic print ones. Be sure to do it on a good paper though cause it will straight up murder the lower grade ones.
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Jul 21, 2024 15:59
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My al star needs an F nib to be even remotely suitable for an everyday office/paper use case, but the M is buttery smooth and ink flow is v generous even on drier inks. It is not a stellar pen, but it has been unfailingly pleasant, which at its price point makes it unarguable against imo
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Jul 25, 2024 18:29
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Chip McFuck posted:You can make a pen out of bamboo, too. I have a couple that I carved a tip on and they write pretty well, too. Carving reeds worked fine for millennia since Ancient Egypt after all! I only know this because I read this in books about calligraphy, I never made my own 
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Aug 24, 2024 11:43
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HolePisser1982 posted:some recent homemade concord nib grinds + the ruling pen mod for the pilot parallel nib. it actually kicks so much rear end being able to make your dream pen, and it's just a tiny piece of metal, so you can unfuck anything you mess up with a couple swipes of a sanding file. plus its fun to own and use a jewelers loupe How does a concord nib work? The curvature seems like it would need some very special grip and angle in order to draw its lines. What kind of lines does it make?
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Aug 27, 2024 07:17
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