DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
Back on the proverbial soapbox about the 'mysterious' Elmer Bernstein.
Not such a mystery after all. This from Google. What I should have done in the first place. Note the flashy sport coat. Very California!!
I will now swallow my pride and my arch sense of humor, and disown all I have written so far about the gentlemen. He is, after all, a person of note, even great note (even Thoroughly Modern Millie, gee whillikers!!)), worthy of standing on his own feet, apart from the equally great Lenny.
I did think briefly of deleting my original post, but then decided one doesn't ever do that.
Let us now return to fountain pen, a satisfying, even edifying topic well worth writing about. This said, I will now refill my circa 1960 rolled gold Parker 51 with a generous slug of blue-black Mont Blanc ink, in its uniquely distinctive bottle.
Not such a mystery after all. This from Google. What I should have done in the first place. Note the flashy sport coat. Very California!!
I will now swallow my pride and my arch sense of humor, and disown all I have written so far about the gentlemen. He is, after all, a person of note, even great note (even Thoroughly Modern Millie, gee whillikers!!)), worthy of standing on his own feet, apart from the equally great Lenny.
I did think briefly of deleting my original post, but then decided one doesn't ever do that.
Let us now return to fountain pen, a satisfying, even edifying topic well worth writing about. This said, I will now refill my circa 1960 rolled gold Parker 51 with a generous slug of blue-black Mont Blanc ink, in its uniquely distinctive bottle.
Last edited:
Godfrey
somewhat colored
- I have one fountain pen, a lovely retractable job whose brand I forget, sitting in its box waiting to be used ... for 28 years now. Oh well.
- My daily scribblings are done with a Parker space pen cartridge in a custom alloy pen that I got through a Kickstarter program an eon ago. It's lovely, wish I'd gotten two of them.
- Most of what I write or draw of late in my journal has been with a 2mm Kitaboshi Mechanical Pencil. Big lead mechanical pencils provide just the right feel for me.
G
- My daily scribblings are done with a Parker space pen cartridge in a custom alloy pen that I got through a Kickstarter program an eon ago. It's lovely, wish I'd gotten two of them.
- Most of what I write or draw of late in my journal has been with a 2mm Kitaboshi Mechanical Pencil. Big lead mechanical pencils provide just the right feel for me.
G
Last edited:
JoeV
Thin Air, Bright Sun
I used the TWSBi Diamond 580 for years as a great piston-filler. And then a friend gave me a humble Pilot Plumix. This is a $15 pen with Pilot’s stub nib. The stub nib worked overnight to change my normally erratic handwriting into something reasonably recognizable. Since then I’ve used the Plumix exclusively and recently I upgraded the body to Pilot’s Metropolitan, again in their stub nib. Not expensive at all, but practical.
I refill the Pilot cartridges with bottled ink using an ink syringe, it holds more ink than a converter. But I do miss the TWSBi with its huge ink capacity.
I refill the Pilot cartridges with bottled ink using an ink syringe, it holds more ink than a converter. But I do miss the TWSBi with its huge ink capacity.
telenous
Well-known
I have the TWSBi piston filler with italic nib, I think it may be the 580 but I forget. That is the one f.p. pen I have that never, ever has a hard start. I may leave it sitting for months, it will just write again, first time, every time, like it's nobody's business. Maybe it's also to do with the ink (Noodler's Ottoman Azure), not sure, but it just doesn't happen with any other pen I have, and there's plenty of them.
AAlfano
Well-known
All of my fountain pens are LAMY. I have four on my desk right now—a Safari, two Studios, and a 2000. I won't say I've never had a hard start with them, but they happen so infrequently that I cannot remember with certainty when the last hard start was or how often they occur. I think all of my LAMY pens are excellent values at their respective price points.
telenous
Well-known
I also prefer writing with Lamy f.pens over TWSBi. The grip is better for my (bad) handwriting, and I can write all day long with a Safari pen. I was just commenting on that very peculiar attribute the TWSBi has.
After I posted I remembered the Platinum #3776 doesn't have hard starts either. But the Platinum has a seal inside the cap that doesn't allow ink to dry.
After I posted I remembered the Platinum #3776 doesn't have hard starts either. But the Platinum has a seal inside the cap that doesn't allow ink to dry.
AAlfano
Well-known
Sorry if my post came across as an argumentative response to yours! I definitely did not intend to do that. (I'm a lawyer and sometimes my writing comes out argumentative-sounding even when I don't intend it to.)
JohnWolf
Well-known
I write a little poetry most mornings, always with a Pilot Metropolitan fine. I know it’s what they call a beginner’s pen, but I’m thrilled with it and have no desire for anything else. I certainly don’t want fountain pen GAS; I’ve enough of that over cameras.
John
John
James Evidon
Established
I have large hands so the Diplomat is no problem for me.
peterm1
Mentor
Back in the late 1980s (when "Yuppies" were still a thing) I did buy a Mont Blanc "Meisterstuck" fountain pen Model 149 - their big fountain pen, so beloved of yuppies and other wannabes like me. 🤪 I used it for quite a few years and enjoyed using it - especially for signing documents, letters and so forth. I tried impressing people with it in the same way that some people try impressing others with an expensive car. I never found that this worked although I did have a few comments along the lines of "the bigger your pen the smaller your.................(insert insult here)". And I enjoyed trying to use it for writing notes, letters and the like, only to realize that my hand-writing was execrable (yes - in case you are not sure of its meaning, that word is as bad as it sounds!) 😖
I still have it and use it now and then just for old time's sake but mainly for "doodling" and remembering the "good old days" when I was young, handsome and stupid. (Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh they sure don't make nostalgia like they used to!)
Some years ago, I did go through a phase of buying a series of cheap Chinese-made fountain pens off eBay just for the hell of it (as well as a couple of real Shaeffer pens.) The Chinese pens are kind of functional - just. But they all seem to share 3 common characteristics as befits their low price. They are mostly made from cheap plastics which tend not to be very robust and in some cases is downright fragile ; they all share the same cheap low-capacity plunger type of filler and ink reservoir (which needs frequent refilling), and worst of all, they all have the same kind of hard, inflexible steel nib that feels like you are writing with a stick or a screw driver in your hand (or name your other favorite pointy and yet inflexible piece of tree refuse or workshop equipment). You see, to be worth their "salt" a good nib (whether steel or precious metal) should be flexible so that the pen is responsive to hand pressure when writing script - that way you get the lovely thin and thick lines in your writing that are characteristic of "copperplate" script. These cheap Chinese nibs require extreme pressure to achieve much inflection of that sort, if any. More recently I have read that you can buy flexible nib replacements on eBay and maybe this is an option but I have not tried them).
The best pen I ever owned for this kind of characteristic was not the Mont Blanc with its gold and platinum nib, but rather was a vintage Conway Stewart (an English brand) with a solid gold 18 carat nib dating to perhaps the 1950's. Lovely to write with but in its day, it was probably a relatively "run of the mill" model and nothing all that special, I think. I noticed just now one on eBay for 200 UK pounds. (Involuntary choking sounds). Mine disappeared from my work office when working in Canberra - proof if proof be needed of public servants' attitude towards separating other citizens from their belongings if it suits their ends.
For all of that, Chinese pens are probably not a bad place to start if someone wants to start using a fountain pen and just needs something to begin with. But you would be much better off if you graduate quickly from there to a vintage pen made by one of the (then) major companies - Schaeffer, Parker etc. You do not really need to go silly, as I did, and buy a Mont Blanc. Such pens are incidentally, still to be found on eBay as second hand items - but they are mostly "uncheap" if that is a word - witness my example of the Conway Stewart. BTW if you are into old fountain pens, I have it on good authority that the little rubber ink bladder inside many of them are hard to find these days - or were a few years ago when I checked (unless someone has started making them again for afficionados.) Old pens are often found with old and dysfunctional bladders just like old guys......like me.
I still have it and use it now and then just for old time's sake but mainly for "doodling" and remembering the "good old days" when I was young, handsome and stupid. (Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh they sure don't make nostalgia like they used to!)
Some years ago, I did go through a phase of buying a series of cheap Chinese-made fountain pens off eBay just for the hell of it (as well as a couple of real Shaeffer pens.) The Chinese pens are kind of functional - just. But they all seem to share 3 common characteristics as befits their low price. They are mostly made from cheap plastics which tend not to be very robust and in some cases is downright fragile ; they all share the same cheap low-capacity plunger type of filler and ink reservoir (which needs frequent refilling), and worst of all, they all have the same kind of hard, inflexible steel nib that feels like you are writing with a stick or a screw driver in your hand (or name your other favorite pointy and yet inflexible piece of tree refuse or workshop equipment). You see, to be worth their "salt" a good nib (whether steel or precious metal) should be flexible so that the pen is responsive to hand pressure when writing script - that way you get the lovely thin and thick lines in your writing that are characteristic of "copperplate" script. These cheap Chinese nibs require extreme pressure to achieve much inflection of that sort, if any. More recently I have read that you can buy flexible nib replacements on eBay and maybe this is an option but I have not tried them).
The best pen I ever owned for this kind of characteristic was not the Mont Blanc with its gold and platinum nib, but rather was a vintage Conway Stewart (an English brand) with a solid gold 18 carat nib dating to perhaps the 1950's. Lovely to write with but in its day, it was probably a relatively "run of the mill" model and nothing all that special, I think. I noticed just now one on eBay for 200 UK pounds. (Involuntary choking sounds). Mine disappeared from my work office when working in Canberra - proof if proof be needed of public servants' attitude towards separating other citizens from their belongings if it suits their ends.
For all of that, Chinese pens are probably not a bad place to start if someone wants to start using a fountain pen and just needs something to begin with. But you would be much better off if you graduate quickly from there to a vintage pen made by one of the (then) major companies - Schaeffer, Parker etc. You do not really need to go silly, as I did, and buy a Mont Blanc. Such pens are incidentally, still to be found on eBay as second hand items - but they are mostly "uncheap" if that is a word - witness my example of the Conway Stewart. BTW if you are into old fountain pens, I have it on good authority that the little rubber ink bladder inside many of them are hard to find these days - or were a few years ago when I checked (unless someone has started making them again for afficionados.) Old pens are often found with old and dysfunctional bladders just like old guys......like me.
Last edited:
telenous
Well-known
No worries, I didn't take it that way. I just wanted to clarify that am not saying the TWSBi is the best pen ever made.
DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
An excellent post, peterm1. (I didn't post it along with this response as, well, it was long enough to pass as one of mine, ha!)
I recall the era of yuppies flashing their expensive MB Meisterstucks as icon symbols - late 1980s. One gentleman in the admin office of a state government agency I worked for then (in Melbourne), had not only one but two of those monsters, he was into visible consumerism and being noticed to be and often made a big to-do of flashing his MBs at meetings and reminding everyone how expensive they were, a limited production pen and so on, ad nauseum (sic). Until one day at a staff meeting someone squelched him perfectly by casually mentioning it could do double duty as a dildo. Said pen-owning gentlemen was openly gay (and had been the first civil servant in the office to "come out" openly at work as gay, amusingly to many of us but to his great annoyance when no-one around him either noticed nor cared) and he reacted negatively to this comment and vanished from the office social scene for a while. In time we all made friends again and he resumed his pen-flashing. For all his prissiness he was intelligent and certainly amusing, he owned a Leica iiic and a Rolleiflex 3.5F so we had a few shared interest. We enjoyed some interesting discussions about the art/theater scene in Melbourne. Sadly we lost contact after I left the project in 1991. I do wonder how he turned out and if he still has his pens.
To move all this on, at his urging I tried his MB a few times and found it rather too big for my liking, which annoyed him - I suspect he may have had thoughts of selling it to me, but at the price they were going even back then (IRRC they cost AUD $450 and up from one of the ritzy pen shops in Collins Street) I wasn't about to bite at his bait. At the time I was using a ca 1960 gold-rolled Parker 51 I had acquired at a giveaway price and had restored - the cost for which was three times what I paid for that pen. I still have this pen and I've just now taken it out for its ritual distilled water/Sunlight dish soap treatment so I can resume using it again, after too many years languishing in one of my storage boxes. Anyway, the 51 suited my style of writing at the time and it's also smaller than the Meisterstuck. Being cynical and suspicious by basic nature I was always careful to not let this shiny gold pen go anywhere out of my sight. Like your Mont Blanc this gentleman's pen, one of the pair, disappeared mysteriously one day, from his desk. He raised holy Cain about this and actually wanted the police called in to search all the desks in the office (it didn't happen). I later heard he somehow got the agency to replace the pen on work insurance, but by then I was planning my escape from that job and I didn't pay much attention to this.
That really is my only involvement with the Meisterstuck. Fifteen years later I lucked into a Mont Blanc Noblesse, a lovely and hardly used 1980s pen in beautiful burgundy red, which I acquired for a whopping AUD $5 from a charity shop and still use regularly to this day. Until then I had no idea Mont Blanc made such usable pens, if I'd known this back in the '80s my writing life could well have gone a different way.
I have a fair collection of Parkers of varied vintages but sadly these are all kept securely stored (I use hard cases of the sort sold for eyeglasses which the pens fit into perfectly, I make sure they are emptied of ink and rinsed out and for extra production are wrapped in microfiber cloths also sold for eyewear). I enjoy my collection and I take out these pens quite regularly and handle them but alas, I no longer use them to write with even tho' I did test them all for ink leakage etc at the time of purchase. I now feel rather guilty about all this and I often think about either rotating the pens so they all get their turn at my writing desk, or disposing of the collection. The latter would probably bring me some spare cash but no enjoyment and having to "sacrifice" the joy of having them around. So I put them away and let them languish in the dark for a while longer. I reckon we all do this as after all collections are usually passive in nature and we tend to acquire those nice items more to look at than make use of. Many of my cameras echo this thought as well...
Ditto ink. I have several bottles of ink dating to the 1940s and at least one that is nudging the century mark. Most still contain some ink and at times I wonder if ink as a writing fluid has a shelf life. I've intended to fill one pen with some of this vintage ink and test it out, but I've not yet taken the time to do this.
Plungers I have a love-hate relationship with. My Mont Blanc and several of my more upmarket Parkers and Sheaffers came with 'brand name' plungers which work okay. The cheaper China-made ones are, well, for me the jury is out on them. Sometimes they fill properly but at other times they refuse to soak up more than a few drops of ink. I put up with them but it's like driving a Mitsubishi when what one really craves is a Mercedes...
As a school kid in Canada in the 1950s we all had fountain pens, mine were probably Sheaffers and low-cost ones as I recall they were much given to leaking blue-black ink which we all used in class all over my school shirts. Back then moms could buy some sort of liquid potion to remove ink from white shirts altho a faint stain always remained. In 1958 or 1959 the first 'biro' ballpoint pens came on the market and we all changed over to those. Hundreds of fountain pens were likely thrown away in my small town alone. I never took to ballpoints which I thought were purely utilitarian much like cheap can openers and shoe horns, useful for some things but somehow not pleasurable to use. A further two decades passed until I eventually found my way back to using FPs again.
So much for nostalgia from me in this post. In the next week I intend to take out my stash of pens and mechanical pencils and actually do some sort of spreadsheet of the ones I own, also look up whatever data I can find online about the more interesting and vintage ones.
I will then decide what to do with them. One of my step-nephews (is this a term?) in Malaysia is the family "egg head" (another long-disused term from the '50s, along with "square" which I'm sure the older readers here will recall) and adores writing in all its guises, altho' more prone to using a laptop than pens. I must make him a gift of a good fountain pen with a plunger and some quality ink and see how he takes to it, on the proviso that if he is not attracted to writing by hand with a decent pen then he can give it back to me. So win-win all the way.
Theads like this one are such wonderful places for story-telling...
I recall the era of yuppies flashing their expensive MB Meisterstucks as icon symbols - late 1980s. One gentleman in the admin office of a state government agency I worked for then (in Melbourne), had not only one but two of those monsters, he was into visible consumerism and being noticed to be and often made a big to-do of flashing his MBs at meetings and reminding everyone how expensive they were, a limited production pen and so on, ad nauseum (sic). Until one day at a staff meeting someone squelched him perfectly by casually mentioning it could do double duty as a dildo. Said pen-owning gentlemen was openly gay (and had been the first civil servant in the office to "come out" openly at work as gay, amusingly to many of us but to his great annoyance when no-one around him either noticed nor cared) and he reacted negatively to this comment and vanished from the office social scene for a while. In time we all made friends again and he resumed his pen-flashing. For all his prissiness he was intelligent and certainly amusing, he owned a Leica iiic and a Rolleiflex 3.5F so we had a few shared interest. We enjoyed some interesting discussions about the art/theater scene in Melbourne. Sadly we lost contact after I left the project in 1991. I do wonder how he turned out and if he still has his pens.
To move all this on, at his urging I tried his MB a few times and found it rather too big for my liking, which annoyed him - I suspect he may have had thoughts of selling it to me, but at the price they were going even back then (IRRC they cost AUD $450 and up from one of the ritzy pen shops in Collins Street) I wasn't about to bite at his bait. At the time I was using a ca 1960 gold-rolled Parker 51 I had acquired at a giveaway price and had restored - the cost for which was three times what I paid for that pen. I still have this pen and I've just now taken it out for its ritual distilled water/Sunlight dish soap treatment so I can resume using it again, after too many years languishing in one of my storage boxes. Anyway, the 51 suited my style of writing at the time and it's also smaller than the Meisterstuck. Being cynical and suspicious by basic nature I was always careful to not let this shiny gold pen go anywhere out of my sight. Like your Mont Blanc this gentleman's pen, one of the pair, disappeared mysteriously one day, from his desk. He raised holy Cain about this and actually wanted the police called in to search all the desks in the office (it didn't happen). I later heard he somehow got the agency to replace the pen on work insurance, but by then I was planning my escape from that job and I didn't pay much attention to this.
That really is my only involvement with the Meisterstuck. Fifteen years later I lucked into a Mont Blanc Noblesse, a lovely and hardly used 1980s pen in beautiful burgundy red, which I acquired for a whopping AUD $5 from a charity shop and still use regularly to this day. Until then I had no idea Mont Blanc made such usable pens, if I'd known this back in the '80s my writing life could well have gone a different way.
I have a fair collection of Parkers of varied vintages but sadly these are all kept securely stored (I use hard cases of the sort sold for eyeglasses which the pens fit into perfectly, I make sure they are emptied of ink and rinsed out and for extra production are wrapped in microfiber cloths also sold for eyewear). I enjoy my collection and I take out these pens quite regularly and handle them but alas, I no longer use them to write with even tho' I did test them all for ink leakage etc at the time of purchase. I now feel rather guilty about all this and I often think about either rotating the pens so they all get their turn at my writing desk, or disposing of the collection. The latter would probably bring me some spare cash but no enjoyment and having to "sacrifice" the joy of having them around. So I put them away and let them languish in the dark for a while longer. I reckon we all do this as after all collections are usually passive in nature and we tend to acquire those nice items more to look at than make use of. Many of my cameras echo this thought as well...
Ditto ink. I have several bottles of ink dating to the 1940s and at least one that is nudging the century mark. Most still contain some ink and at times I wonder if ink as a writing fluid has a shelf life. I've intended to fill one pen with some of this vintage ink and test it out, but I've not yet taken the time to do this.
Plungers I have a love-hate relationship with. My Mont Blanc and several of my more upmarket Parkers and Sheaffers came with 'brand name' plungers which work okay. The cheaper China-made ones are, well, for me the jury is out on them. Sometimes they fill properly but at other times they refuse to soak up more than a few drops of ink. I put up with them but it's like driving a Mitsubishi when what one really craves is a Mercedes...
As a school kid in Canada in the 1950s we all had fountain pens, mine were probably Sheaffers and low-cost ones as I recall they were much given to leaking blue-black ink which we all used in class all over my school shirts. Back then moms could buy some sort of liquid potion to remove ink from white shirts altho a faint stain always remained. In 1958 or 1959 the first 'biro' ballpoint pens came on the market and we all changed over to those. Hundreds of fountain pens were likely thrown away in my small town alone. I never took to ballpoints which I thought were purely utilitarian much like cheap can openers and shoe horns, useful for some things but somehow not pleasurable to use. A further two decades passed until I eventually found my way back to using FPs again.
So much for nostalgia from me in this post. In the next week I intend to take out my stash of pens and mechanical pencils and actually do some sort of spreadsheet of the ones I own, also look up whatever data I can find online about the more interesting and vintage ones.
I will then decide what to do with them. One of my step-nephews (is this a term?) in Malaysia is the family "egg head" (another long-disused term from the '50s, along with "square" which I'm sure the older readers here will recall) and adores writing in all its guises, altho' more prone to using a laptop than pens. I must make him a gift of a good fountain pen with a plunger and some quality ink and see how he takes to it, on the proviso that if he is not attracted to writing by hand with a decent pen then he can give it back to me. So win-win all the way.
Theads like this one are such wonderful places for story-telling...
Last edited:
DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
It's good to see two gentleman in this thread shaking hands and making up, especially on a holy topic such as FPs...
peterm1
Mentor
Glad you appreciate my weird sense of humour DownUnder.An excellent post, peterm1. (I didn't post it along with this response as, well, it was long enough to pass as one of mine, ha!)
I recall the era of yuppies flashing their expensive MB Meisterstucks as icon symbols - late 1980s. One gentleman in the admin office of a state government agency I worked for then (in Melbourne), had not only one but two of those monsters, he was very much into consumerism and being noticed to be same and often made a big to-do of flashing them at meetings and reminding everyone how expensive they were, a limited production pen, and so on, ad nauseum (sic). Until one day at a staff meeting someone squelched him perfectly by casually mentioning it could do double duty - as a dildo. Said pen-owning gentlemen was openly gay (and had been the first civil servant in the office to "come out" openly at work as gay, amusingly to many of us but to his great annoyance when no-one around him either noticed nor cared. He reacted quite badly to this and disappeared from the social scene in the office for a fair while, but eventually we all made friends again and he returned and resumed his pen-flashing. For all his prissiness he was an intelligent and amusing person, he owned a Leica iiic and a Rolleiflex 3.5F so we had more than pens as a shared interest. Ee enjoyed some interesting discussions about the art/theater scene in Melbourne. Sadly we lost contact after I left the project in 1991. I do wonder how he turned out and if he still has his pens.
To move all this on, at his urging I tried his MB a few times and found it rather too big for my liking, which annoyed him - I suspect he may have had thoughts of selling it to me, but at the price they were going even back then (IRRC they cost AUD $450 and up from one of the ritzy pen shops in Collins Street) I wasn't about to bite at his bait. At the time I was using a ca 1960 gold-rolled Parker 51 I had acquired at a giveaway price and had restored - the cost for which was three times what I paid for that pen. I still have this pen and I've just now taken it out for its ritual distilled water/Sunlight dish soap treatment so I can resume using it again, after too many years languishing in one of my storage boxes. Anyway, the 51 suited my style of writing at the time and it's also smaller than the Meisterstuck. Being cynical and suspicious by basic nature I was always careful to not let this shiny gold pen go anywhere out of my sight. Like your Mont Blanc this gentleman's pen, one of the pair, disappeared mysteriously one day, from his desk. He raised holy Cain about this and actually wanted the police called in to search all the desks in the office (it didn't happen). I later heard he somehow got the agency to replace the pen on work insurance, but by then I was planning my escape from that job and I didn't pay much attention to this.
That really is my only involvement with the Meisterstuck. Fifteen years later I lucked into a Mont Blanc Noblesse, a lovely and hardly used 1980s pen in beautiful burgundy red, which I acquired for a whopping AUD $5 from a charity shop and still use regularly to this day. Until then I had no idea Mont Blanc made such usable pens, if I'd known this back in the '80s my writing life could well have gone a different way.
I have a fair collection of Parkers of varied vintages but sadly these are all kept securely stored (I use hard cases of the sort sold for eyeglasses which the pens fit into perfectly, I make sure they are emptied of ink and rinsed out and for extra production are wrapped in microfiber cloths also sold for eyewear). I enjoy my collection and I take out these pens quite regularly and handle them but alas, I no longer use them to write with even tho' I did test them all for ink leakage etc at the time of purchase. I now feel rather guilty about all this and I often think about either rotating the pens so they all get their turn at my writing desk, or disposing of the collection. The latter would probably bring me some spare cash but no enjoyment and having to "sacrifice" the joy of having them around. So I put them away and let them languish in the dark for a while longer. I reckon we all do this as after all collections are usually passive in nature and we tend to acquire those nice items more to look at than make use of. Many of my cameras echo this thought as well...
Ditto ink. I have several bottles of ink dating to the 1940s and at least one that is nudging the century mark. Most still contain some ink and at times I wonder if ink as a writing fluid has a shelf life. I've intended to fill one pen with some of this vintage ink and test it out, but I've not yet taken the time to do this.
Plungers I have a love-hate relationship with. My Mont Blanc and several of my more upmarket Parkers and Sheaffers came with 'brand name' plungers which work okay. The cheaper China-made ones are, well, for me the jury is out on them. Sometimes they fill properly but at other times they refuse to soak up more than a few drops of ink. I put up with them but it's like driving a Mitsubishi when what one really craves is a Mercedes...
As a school kid in Canada in the 1950s we all had fountain pens, mine were probably Sheaffers and low-cost ones as I recall they were much given to leaking blue-black ink which we all used in class all over my school shirts. Back then moms could buy some sort of liquid potion to remove ink from white shirts altho a faint stain always remained. In 1958 or 1959 the first 'biro' ballpoint pens came on the market and we all changed over to those. Hundreds of fountain pens were likely thrown away in my small town alone. I never took to ballpoints which I thought were purely utilitarian much like cheap can openers and shoe horns, useful for some things but somehow not pleasurable to use. A further two decades passed until I eventually found my way back to using FPs again.
So much for nostalgia from me in this post. In the next week I intend to take out my stash of pens and mechanical pencils and actually do some sort of spreadsheet of the ones I own, also look up whatever data I can find online about the more interesting and vintage ones.
I will then decide what to do with them. One of my step-nephews (is this a term?) in Malaysia is the family "egg head" (another long-disused term from the '50s, along with "square" which I'm sure the older readers here will recall) and adores writing in all its guises, altho' more prone to using a laptop than pens. I must make him a gift of a good fountain pen with a plunger and some quality ink and see how he takes to it, on the proviso that if he is not attracted to writing by hand with a decent pen then he can give it back to me. So win-win all the way.
Theads like this one are such wonderful places for story-telling...
AAlfano
Well-known
Fountain pens are a relatively recent interest for me (last 10–15 years). Before that I had a few Cross ball point pens (and mechanical pencils—I received several matched sets of these as gifts as a teenager). I also received a MB ball point as a law school graduation present. That was a nice pen, but it was still a ball point at the end of the day.
When I started practicing law in the 1990s, most lawyers had at least one nice pen that they used all the time. You don't see that any more; it's pretty rare for me to see another lawyer using anything other than a disposable office supply store pen.
My MB ballpoint died at some point after accidentally going through the washer and dryer. Being too cheap to buy a replacement for myself, I picked up a Pilot Dr. Grip Limited. This is a super-comfortable pen and I still use them today when not using a fountain pen. Somehow I discovered that you could trim the rear cap of a MB rollerball refill and use it in this pen; however, after a few years for some reason the trimmed MB refills would no longer fit. I don't know if MB changed their refills somehow. I have used the regular Pilot G2 refills since then. The 0.5mm versions to me write much better than the 0.7mm version. I have also recently discovered a great rollerball refill that fits these pens—the Schmidt 5888.
Anyway, hacking the Pilot G2s to use rollerball refills got me started down the pen rabbit hole. I acquired a couple of Lamy Safari fountain pens and used them for several years with Lamy cartridges. Then, I made the mistake of going into a store that sold really nice pens. I tried out a Lamy Studio and several other fountain pens and I was hooked. Then came the converters and using bottled fountain pen inks. Now I'm also hooked on the beautiful and unusual inks. I use Waterman inks as my standard blue and black, along with a few Diamine (Sherwood Green and Red Dragon) and Pilot Iro (Shin Kai) inks. I'm sure my coworkers think I'm crazy filling fountain pens from a bottle of ink in 2024, but they are little things that bring a bit of tactile pleasure to my work day.
When I started practicing law in the 1990s, most lawyers had at least one nice pen that they used all the time. You don't see that any more; it's pretty rare for me to see another lawyer using anything other than a disposable office supply store pen.
My MB ballpoint died at some point after accidentally going through the washer and dryer. Being too cheap to buy a replacement for myself, I picked up a Pilot Dr. Grip Limited. This is a super-comfortable pen and I still use them today when not using a fountain pen. Somehow I discovered that you could trim the rear cap of a MB rollerball refill and use it in this pen; however, after a few years for some reason the trimmed MB refills would no longer fit. I don't know if MB changed their refills somehow. I have used the regular Pilot G2 refills since then. The 0.5mm versions to me write much better than the 0.7mm version. I have also recently discovered a great rollerball refill that fits these pens—the Schmidt 5888.
Anyway, hacking the Pilot G2s to use rollerball refills got me started down the pen rabbit hole. I acquired a couple of Lamy Safari fountain pens and used them for several years with Lamy cartridges. Then, I made the mistake of going into a store that sold really nice pens. I tried out a Lamy Studio and several other fountain pens and I was hooked. Then came the converters and using bottled fountain pen inks. Now I'm also hooked on the beautiful and unusual inks. I use Waterman inks as my standard blue and black, along with a few Diamine (Sherwood Green and Red Dragon) and Pilot Iro (Shin Kai) inks. I'm sure my coworkers think I'm crazy filling fountain pens from a bottle of ink in 2024, but they are little things that bring a bit of tactile pleasure to my work day.
JohnWolf
Well-known
I really enjoyed your post. Ah, yes, the rabbit hole. Which is why I’m reluctant to try other pens. I imagine them accumulating, like unused cameras and lenses. With old age has come an obsessive minimalism. Now, finding the fountain pen equivalent to my M2, that might be a worthy pursuit.
John
agentlossing
Well-known
I've steadfastly avoided the rabbit hole with pens. I won't do it, I won't do it... My Kaweco Sport works just fine...
... I don't need a brass one, I don't need a brass one...
... I don't need a brass one, I don't need a brass one...
DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
I too in my old age (some would say "dotage") am trying to go the way of minimalism, with some success in a few areas. Good of JW to bring cameras into the fold of all this 'penful' discussion, so may I add my small bit to his posted thoughts.
I've owned Leica Ms in the past, but the range I've really bonded with since the late '90s are the Contax Gs. Notably the G1. At one time I had four and five Zeiss G lenses, but in 2023 I made an impulsive decision to sell my stash of four G1s and one Zeiss G lens (the 45/2.0, which I've hardly used) to a Japanese buyer I've done business with for a long time, who kindly agreed to my reasonable but not low budget sale price. We have a sort of loose guarantee about what I sell him, so when one of the four G1s proved to be faulty (it occasionally refuses to rewind a film which then has to be manhandled back into its cassette by way of a film loading bag) I took it back and refunded its sale price.
A few months later as if by a sort of universe-inspired destiny, I was gifted an almost mint-condition G1. So I had gone from four 1s to none and back to two. Destiny indeed! I still had four lenses (21, 28, 35, 90) and a fast-dwindling but still sizable lot of old refrigerated films. So I took up film photography again, initially as a secondary backup to my digital (Nikons) image-making. Over the past year I've used the G1 more, as it suits my offhand way of shooting, and with those Zeiss G lenses the results are usually nothing short of stupendous.
Using mechanical cameras and fountain pens in our lives does something to our souls, for those who believe in such, and to our hearts. They take us back to an earlier time when just about everything was less complex and complicated and we all lived and worked with simpler means to achieve the results we wanted. I am by no means one who believes that everything in the world in 1950, 1960 or 1970 was absolutely perfect, but things were certainly not as impersonal and mechanized as they are now. The cars in my early adult years - Peugeots 403, a Saab, a Ford Mustang - were as minimal as my cameras and my pens. I spent far too much on wheels and in my dreams I longed to own a Morgan 4 roadster, which alas I never did get. Today we own an old Audi. Pens I have already written about. Cameras? Nikkormats, Rollei TLRs, Contax Gs, now Nikon Ds - the latter more complex than all the others put together but I still manage to make minimal use of all their digifunctions.
There is something immensely satisfying to the inner spirit in using mechanically simple (or in older cameras, simpler) instruments in our lives. As JW has written, our pens and inks fit well into a minimalist life.
Last edited:
Godfrey
somewhat colored
The Contax G1 is a mechanical camera? I thought they were all electronic... 🤔
I had a Contax G2 ... it was definitely all electronically powered.
But back to fountain pens ... I was looking for something today and discovered I still had an old Parker fountain pen in my drawer. Lovely thing: I have the nib and ink reservoir soaking in some light solvent to clean them out at present. I don't think I've used it for forty years, and the old ink that was in it had turned to a hard dust.
G
I had a Contax G2 ... it was definitely all electronically powered.
But back to fountain pens ... I was looking for something today and discovered I still had an old Parker fountain pen in my drawer. Lovely thing: I have the nib and ink reservoir soaking in some light solvent to clean them out at present. I don't think I've used it for forty years, and the old ink that was in it had turned to a hard dust.
G
dourbalistar
Buy more film
I'm with you on that one, although I did succumb to a brass Lilliput before slowly backing away from another deep, dark money pit. 😅