Fountain pen, someone?

Fountain pen, someone?

  • Fountain pen

    Votes: 211 70.1%

  • Roller

    Votes: 33 11.0%

  • Computer

    Votes: 37 12.3%

  • I do not write

    Votes: 5 1.7%

  • Others

    Votes: 15 5.0%
  • Total voters
    301
Nice to see this old thread revived. I have a Parker 51 in my breast pocket today. About to start experimenting with some Chou Kuro platinum black ink. Nothing like a fresh bottle of ink, except maybe a new pen. . .I probably have more Waterman's than anything else. I do have a Pilot vanishing point pen somewhere around the house. Sadly I dropped it while it was "unvanished" and it never really wrote the same way afterwards. Brilliant design though.
 
recently started to re-grind (and polish) the nibs of a few Kaweco Sports. Very happy with the results.
 
DownUnder said:
My favorite pen of a long lifetime (mine, not the pen's) is a Mont Blanc Noblesse from the 1980s, a red one with a 14K fine nib, which I found in a charity shop in Melbourne about ten years ago for $5. The volunteer who sold it to me said she thought it was a cheapie from China. Good on her! It's a classic and worth a fair bit, but more importantly it's the best writer I've owned - I have about 50 in my collection box, so this is most definitely an "informed" comment, at least for me.

For reasons obvious the Mont Blanc rarely leaves home. A few years ago I was using it on a train in Indonesia, when I had finished writing my travel notes I put it in my travel pack but it fell out to the floor. A very kind lady in the seat across from me pointed this out to me. I owe that lovely woman a great deal, the loss of this pen would have devastated me.

Now and then I make a valiant effort to use several of my other pens but the Mont Blanc is by far my favorite. Currently on my desk as I write this is a fairly new Parker something or other (the box bears no information as to its "lineage" and I've not been able to trace it on any of the several pen web sites I occasionally check) I picked up in a charity shop in Springwood, New South Wales, last year for $8. It was a retirement gift to a lady named Emma R and is inscribed with her name, which obviously reduces its value to a collector but not to a user/writer.

My second favorite is a classic, a Parker 51 finished in rolled gold, dating to the 1960s, given to me as part of a set (pen and pencil) by a close friend (sadly long deceased) in Sydney in 1980. I've used it a few times but it occupies a place of honor in my collection box as whenever I take it out it triggers many happy memories of our friendship. I rarely use this pen, at most once a year, but it's a good writer.

the '00s saw a revival in FP usage. Many of my friends use them. They have mostly Parkers, Shaeffers or Kawecos and say the Liliputs are fine pens but fiddly to write with. I own three in their classic metal tins with all the accessories, but I have to say I've not really taken to them. Too small for my hand, maybe.

I have a few very old pens including two unusual Art Deco ones I picked up in Europe in the 1980s. At that time ('80s and '90s) fountain pens were being dumped by the zillions in favor of the newer fine-liners which everyone seemed to want to use, even we did in my architectural office in the '90s as they were, as they say, "cheap and cheerful", never leaked, were very fine-lined and once emptied could be thrown away (in the recycling bin) and new ones bought for about $1 each. I'm now retired and I have no idea if these pens are still in popular use or not. I'm now more into environmental issues and I try to no longer use anything that gets thrown out after its use-by, not that I'm particularly successful at this but we do have to try and it gives me a great sense of satisfaction to take out a bottle of Lamy ink and fill up an empty fountain pen - which sort of takes me back to the 1950s when I was a grade school kid and had two highly valued pens, cheapies of their time (probably Sheaffers) which invariably leaked blue ink and stained my shirt pockets...

I never did take to biros when they first appeared in the shops in eastern Canada (this was about 1959) as I found them difficult to write with. For me a fountain pen is more easily held and I can easily draw good letters of fine lines with one. So for me, the die was cast - or the ink, as it were.
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As long as we are telling stories, when I returned to the States with my Diplomat, I had filled out my customs cardincluding the Mont Blanc Diplomat @ $150. I always filled out the customs questionnaire honestly; why cheat and get caught? Not worth the effort. Anyway, the US customs official gave me a hard look and said brusquely, "let's see that fountain pen". Nervously, I took it out and handed it to him not knowing what I had done wrong, if anything. He looked at it, opened it, inspected it closely and handed it back saying, "I've never seen a pen costing $150 before". :giggle:
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Nice to see this old thread revived. I have a Parker 51 in my breast pocket today. About to start experimenting with some Chou Kuro platinum black ink. Nothing like a fresh bottle of ink, except maybe a new pen. . .I probably have more Waterman's than anything else. I do have a Pilot vanishing point pen somewhere around the house. Sadly I dropped it while it was "unvanished" and it never really wrote the same way afterwards. Brilliant design though.
Click to expand...
I have more Waterman's ink than you do, I reckon. About 30 bottles. Mostly bought in Asia during my travels as until recently ink prices there were far lower than in the West. In 2015 in Bali I was mooching around in an old department store in Kuta (now closed) and found ten unopened bottles of Mont Blanc ink which I bought for around UD $4 each bottle. The find of a lifetime.

Like you I also hav a Parker 51, in fact two of them. And a Parker 45. (I've already written about one which I acquired in 1980.) I've made a note to myself to take them out and clean them later. And use them. Good pens need careful attention and now and then, a bit of lovin'...

Between the two of us we should open a fountain pen ink shop.
 
DownUnder said:
I have more Waterman's ink than you do, I reckon. About 30 bottles. Mostly bought in Asia during my travels as until recently ink prices there were far lower than in the West. In 2015 in Bali I was mooching around in an old department store in Kuta (now closed) and found ten unopened bottles of Mont Blanc ink which I bought for around UD $4 each bottle. The find of a lifetime.

Like you I also hav a Parker 51, in fact two of them. And a Parker 45. (I've already written about one which I acquired in 1980.) I've made a note to myself to take them out and clean them later. And use them. Good pens need careful attention and now and then, a bit of lovin'...

Between the two of us we should open a fountain pen ink shop.
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Parker 45 gray (2nd in the picture) was my first fountain pen, my mom bought it when I started in 2nd grade
I got a stainless one (1st on the left) for my 1st communion (1980) and have used it ever since as you can see in the wear of the body where the cap is posted.
I have since amassed a good collection of 15 or 20 of them in many more colors. Love the design, simplicity and the fact that they just work!

I never liked the P51, the hooded nib aesthetics were not of my liking, but my father in law gave me his (late 1940s) and after having it refurbished it is a wonderful pen.
 

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Benjamin Marks said:
Nice to see this old thread revived. I have a Parker 51 in my breast pocket today. About to start experimenting with some Chou Kuro platinum black ink. Nothing like a fresh bottle of ink, except maybe a new pen. . .I probably have more Waterman's than anything else. I do have a Pilot vanishing point pen somewhere around the house. Sadly I dropped it while it was "unvanished" and it never really wrote the same way afterwards. Brilliant design though.
Click to expand...
@Benjamin Marks, if the Pilot hasn't vanished in the house, they do sell replacement nib units:

Pilot Vanishing Point Replacement Nibs | JetPens

Pilot Namiki Vanishing Point fountain pens feature easily replaceable nib units. Change tip sizes or swap out a damaged nib with one of these replacements.
www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
 
James Evidon said:
As long as we are telling stories, when I returned to the States with my Diplomat, I had filled out my customs cardincluding the Mont Blanc Diplomat @ $150. I always filled out the customs questionnaire honestly; why cheat and get caught? Not worth the effort. Anyway, the US customs official gave me a hard look and said brusquely, "let's see that fountain pen". Nervously, I took it out and handed it to him not knowing what I had done wrong, if anything. He looked at it, opened it, inspected it closely and handed it back saying, "I've never seen a pen costing $150 before". :giggle:
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RFF is a wonderful site for story-telling...

Overlooking my once-in-a-lifetime find of a MB Noblesse for AUD $5, I am envious of your MB Diplomat for the price you paid for it. I tend to thinner pens for my style of writing, and my Noblesse comes across as anorexic compared to the somewhat fatter girth of your Diplomat, but then both are fine writing instruments, and I would be equally happy with either. Me with my Noblesse, you with your Diplomat. Two cases of win-win.

It is a fine pen and well worth spending that much on it. As we here all know, a good fountain pen is a lifetime investment.
 
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Elmer Bernstein. Long forgotten, long neglected, maybe even longer around.

So little is known about him. We cannot even determine if he was related to Lenny, and if so whether he felt resentful at the latter's great fame while he languished in the shadows of - whatever... :mad:

Or for that matter what camera he used. I reckon he was a Leica man - Leonard was known to have owned a Leica iii kit in the '50s. Or maybe a Rollei TLR, as befit someone living in the background of a more famous sibling.

Or did he design pens? An honorable profession, this. Alder Statesman's (#228) Mont Blanc by whatever name it goes by, is truly a beauty to behold.
 
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On my desk the end of a bottle of Tanzanite Pelikan Ink, and a freshly opened one. When the latter is down a bit I tip the rest of the remaining in the first bottle into the new bottle. The big nib of the M1000s needs a deep bottle. That bottle is the Montegrappa Ink, blue black. Finally there is a beautiful symmetrical ribbed wide bottle of Faber Castell Carbon Black. That filled the Parker 51 I revived. As well as those three pens there are two M800s one F and one EF, the two nib sizes of my very different M1000 pens. They’re both black and the M800s are actually M805s, Palladium coated Stresemanns. There’s a little 605 lost again somewhere in the desk or a drawer or a suit or it’s lining. Cute but a bit small for me to write neatly with.

I rotate the pens the way a golfer might ring the changes with different putters. That process heals a little my tremor and dysgraphia. Paper is what I need to improve now. One place I work they recently returned to a higher quality stock. I’ve sequestered a ream in case they go cheap again.

It is said that a writer is just someone who finds it harder to write than other people. It is meant in the sense of artistic or other composition. In my case it is also literally the act of writing. Also left handed, but that is not the issue. Or is it…
 
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Oi! Am I reading this right? So it's Stresemannand not Bernstein? Oh, poor Lenny! (Added later: Also poor Elmer!)

I am, in a word - gutted. Symbolically, of course. Even though our house cat with the sharpest claws now has new thoughts, if indeed it is true that cats think and don't only visualize images as action points...

I predict it will be half a diazepam for me tonight...
 
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Richard G said:
On my desk the end of a bottle of Tanzanite Pelikan Ink, and a freshly opened one. When the latter is down a bit I tip the rest of the remaining in the first bottle into the new bottle. The big nib of the M1000s needs a deep bottle. That bottle is the Montegrappa Ink, blue black. Finally there is a beautiful symmetrical ribbed wide bottle of Faber Castell Carbon Black. That filled the Parker 51 I revived. As well as those three pens there are two M800s one F and one EF, the two nib sizes of my very different M1000 pens. They’re both black and the M800s are actually M805s, Palladium coated Stresemanns. There’s a little 605 lost again somewhere in the desk or a drawer or a suit or it’s lining. Cute but a bit small for me to write neatly with.

I rotate the pens the way a golfer might ring the changes with different putters. That process heals a little my tremor and dysgraphia. Paper is what I need to improve now. One place I work they recently returned to a higher quality stock. I’ve sequestered a ream in case they go cheap again.

It is said that a writer is just someone who finds it harder to write than other people. It is meant in the sense of artistic or other composition. In my case it is also literally the act of writing. Also left handed, but that is not the issue. Or is it…
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We are kindred spirits, you and I - or should that be, you and me? Whichever.

I also am a collector of 'odd' and unusual inks. Nowadays in everything-is-too-expensive Australia, good ink from small producers cost a small smidgen or the planet, and I have to keep my acquisition budgets (already eroded by the many photo purchases I too often make) to a sensible limit or face domestic annihilation. I have a few, okay too many bottles of small-producer ink, but I hesitate to tap into those before I use up the small pile of Mont Blanc ink I bought in 2006 for a fraction of what they were and still are worth. Which will keep me in good ink for the next decade, by which time my pens will surely have survived me. I hope someone in our family will go on with the process and discover a passion for writing things down by hand, altho'with computer madness now pervading every corner of the planet this seems unlikely.

You wrote about "reviving" a Parker 51. How do you do this? In the past I have cleaned very old pens with a mixture of distilled or demineralized water heated to almost blood temperature and then a dash of Sunlight dish detergent added. I rinse out the pen a few times but keep the water temperature low so it doesn't disintegrate the bladder or damage the plunger. Up till now this has worked. I once had a beautifully finished 1960s Sheaffer so-called refurbished by a pen shop in Melbourne, which cost me AUD $80 and seemingly did not result in anything too beneficial to the pen, it did write quite well afterwards but not any better than it had before the treatment. I have a few 1920s and 1930s pen in need of gentle TLC to get them writing again but I've been reluctant to subject them to any intrusive treatments in case I do lethal damage to their innards. Your advice about this would be appreciated as I'm also reluctant to fork more AUD $80 payments for what I could easily do myself at home.

Your comments about what constitutes "a writer" were of particular interest to me. I was a journalist for 15 years and I've written many things for publication, and in so doing I came to realise that one of my personal traits is I tend to block up when I have to sit down and actually do a final draft of anything. I have two manuscripts in my archives, one a spy thriller novel set in Bangkok where I lived in he mid-'70s and started writing in 1977, that's 47 years ago! Also a detailed travel narrative on Indonesia I did in 1993 and still haven't been able to come to terms with in doing a final draft. I sit down to finish these but the (too many) saved drafts documents I have in my laptops prove too overwhelming for me to try to complete. I try to remind myself that "good enough is good enough" but my perfectionist traits rise to the fore and I back off.

I've taken us off topic here and I will say not much more, only that what you wrote struck a chord and I wanted to acknowledge that there are at least two of us in the same so-called boat.

It's good that we write and it's even better than we go on using fountain pens which are basically 19th century instruments, but they give us so much pleasure and they make what could easily be a mundane act so much more enjoyable. I feel much the same about manual typewriters but that is another topic entirely - maybe one for us to explore here in another post.

Richard G, many thanks for posting your thoughts on this, they were greatly appreciated and enjoyed by me.
 
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