Less Is More: Having Just One Inked At A Time...

[sirgilbert357]

I'm still fairly new to this hobby (since about Nov of 2014 I think), so when I first got involved, I saw my pen collection blossom in fast forward and I went from having one FP to having something like 7 or 8. No big deal in of itself, but they were ALL inked! I barely have time to write...maybe 15 to 20 mins a day and very little on the weekends. So, naturally, this was a bit much.

 

I started carrying just one pen per day on my person and one other one in my workbag, with the intention of draining each one through focused usage. I used them one by one until they were dry and then cleaned, rinsed, dried them and put them up. I just finished emptying out my Pelikan last night and realized I had NO pens with ink in them. It felt strange...and liberating, LOL. So I filled my Pelikan and my Parker 45 and will just use those TWO only until they run out...but will focus on just using / carrying one at a time, with the other being a backup in case I run out away from an ink supply. It feels great! There's no more of this "OMG, which pen should I pick to carry??? Uh, screw it, I'll take them ALLLLLLL!". I guess I'm evolving in the hobby a bit. Am I normal??

 

LOL, anyway, just wondering if anyone else has been where I am? I feel like having one pen in my shirt and one in my workbag is all I really need right now...and it feels pretty good.

[jar]

I quite often have only one pen inked and assume that should it run out of ink I will just use whatever is available.

[Blade Runner]

That's fine. When I was a student, I only had one fp. Now I keep more than a dozen inked because I like to have a variety of nibs and inks at hand for a variety of stationery and moods and occasions.

[PaperDarts]

For years, I had one main fountain pen I used, and a couple of others that rarely were inked. I used only black ink, too - I did have a bottle of blue-black for when I was feeling especially giddy and adventurous. Then I discovered the FPN....and as sirgilbert357 says, my collection of pens and inks exploded. Of course I had to try out many combinations of pens and inks - and before I knew it I had at least two dozen pens inked at any time. Now, I do use pens every day - but I'm at the point when I want to whittle that number down considerably. I've started cleaning and storing pens rather than refilling every one. I'm not yet at the point where I have only two inked, but it's a goal! My difficulty is that I have a number of pens that I really love to use, each with a different colour of ink. It's hard to give up that variety, but I feel the need to have a less unwieldy rotation.

[sirgilbert357]

I have something working in my favor that most of ya'll (yeah, I'm from Texas) probably don't: I only have two inks! Crazy, right? But they are really exactly what I was looking for in an ink and since I literally never write in colors other than blue or black, I just haven't yet had the desire to buy more. I *do* appreciate the beauty of other colors of ink such as the darker reds and some of the greens, copper and turquoise variants, etc, but I would only ever get to write with them in a journal and I guess I just want to exhaust what I have before buying another color that could potentially sit unused -- especially if I am only really carrying one pen...so my two blues will do for now. And if I want a black, I reach for my Parker Jotter with a gel refill (which stays at work) or my Waterman Hemisphere with a Pilot G2 refill (which stays at home).

[Downcelot]

I hear ya ... clearly. I have the same problem with trying to find things to write with my pens. I hate filling them, the best time an ink bottle is great for me is when I put the cap on it and put it away. Thus, I like pens with high ink capacity.

 

I also enjoy the variety in ink colors. I have picked up 5 favorite inks and set out for 5 inked pens max rule. Summer in Cali can be really hot and dry; so the number of inked pens may be reduced to 3.

 

Time to time, I take out my old college books for chem/ bio/ cal and do some brain challenging. Sometime, I do take out English grammar book and rework on sentence structures ( hey, this is still useful when you need to write/type for corporate). I do have chicken scratch hand writing and been working on improving that for sometime.

[sirgilbert357]

I do have chicken scratch hand writing and been working on improving that for sometime.

 

I force myself to write in cursive in my journals and pretty much any time I am not at work. I only use print at work for some reason. It has forced me to slow down, and as a result, my handwriting has improved a bit. Its not the the "silver bullet" for bad handwriting, but cursive sure helps me, LOL.

[Downcelot]

 

I force myself to write in cursive in my journals and pretty much any time I am not at work. I only use print at work for some reason. It has forced me to slow down, and as a result, my handwriting has improved a bit. Its not the the "silver bullet" for bad handwriting, but cursive sure helps me, LOL.

I hear ya, I hear ya. Yep, that cursive does help a lot to improve the unification.

I'm slightly (only slightly) a bit ahead of keeping unification (i think). That is to deliver letters that look good (this one is really hard to work on for me because we still need to maintain the unification; while I love to write fast)

[sirgilbert357]

Does anyone simply have just ONE pen inked and that's it? If so, how many pens are in your collection?

[The Blue Knight]

I like to have no more then 2 pens inked. One cheap pen, one expensive,

[da vinci]

I only carry one inked pen at a time. I pick the pen, ink it, use it until its empty, then rotate it.

 

I do have a P51 desk pen that has ink in it too - does that count

[jar]

Does anyone simply have just ONE pen inked and that's it? If so, how many pens are in your collection?

 

Very often only one inked at a time, sometimes two but very seldom more than that. My accumulation is just south of 300 pens I think so not a large accumulation.

 

Today it is a red Signum Orione Duetto and before that it was a blue one. Before those two it was a barleycorn Sterling silver Sheaffer Legacy Heritage.

 

Over Christmas it was an ST Dupont Medici.

 

Not sure what will be next though.

[KBeezie]

Does anyone simply have just ONE pen inked and that's it? If so, how many pens are in your collection?

Apparently I fail at self discipline... but hey, it's not like when I had 18 inked...

 

http://i.imgur.com/hVaTQov.jpg

 

If I had to choose only one to keep inked:

 

The safest choice would be the Pilot Long Murex with the <F> nib that writes in between a pilot fine and extra-fine, tad on the dry side nib wise, but flows consistently well with noodler's blue steel, and can be written on the backside with that same ink for a slightly drier flow as it would allow me for the *most* part to use nearly any paper.

 

The one following in terms of being able to use on nearly any paper, would be the Eversharp Skyline with a 14K EF that flexes somewhat easily to a medium (easily in the sense that it stays a consistent EF with a light hand, but is quite easy to make it a M~B without really any effort). But only if I kept it inked with R&K Salix, since it goes down pretty well, but doesn't bleed/feather on even very crappy paper with a light/normal hand.

 

That's the main two I can think of if I had to narrow it down to one, and if I was narrowing it down to two, it would be one of those two plus the Pelikan M250 with the Steel 1.0 nib, in order to give me some variation. Would likely end up being the Skyline + M250 if comfort was my goal with reasonable options between EF~M and 1.0. But my ink choices would remain limited to Salix for the Skyline, leaving the 1.0 some leeway to have some fun (Oxblood is in it currently).

[mirosc]

Does anyone simply have just ONE pen inked and that's it? If so, how many pens are in your collection?

Very often just one pen inked. Very often two: one on my desk at home, one in my jacket when I'm off to work (and it stays there / in the wardrobe so that I don't forget it). Sometimes more (when I'm drawing, doing some calligraphy work,...)

I've downsized in the past years to about 50 pens, still going on...

[the_gasman]

Unfortunately, my job doesn't need much writing (that's why I chosen it). It has only become a disadvantage this year, when I caught the fp bug. Until then I had always used a fountain pen (with the emphasis on the "a") and had only used black ink from cartridges. This year a younger colleague introduced me to the joys of using old pens with a variety of inks. In my first rush of enthusiasm I used every pen I owned (about 10) and every shade of ink I could find (about 8).

 

Pragmatism had to conquer enthusiasm. I now use Diamine registrar's ink in an eye-dropper Platinum Preppy (not bothered if the potentially corrosive registrar's ink devours a £2.35 pen) for daily use at work, and I use one colour ink in one other pen at home for leisure. So that I can vary both the pen and the ink at frequent intervals I only partially fill the reservoir (25-50%) each time I ink a different pen. The Preppy & Registrar's ink are for business; the constantly changing pens and inks are purely for pleasure.

 

The main problem that I have now is the writing that I do for pleasure is unmitigated inane rubbish. I wish I had something more meaningful to scribble.

 

Cheers, David.

[ac12]

Prior to college, I only used 1 fountain pen, which I have no idea what it was.

In college, it was 2 Parker 45s, primary and backup.

After college it was back to 1, which I cannot remember which one it was.

Today, way too many. I have my 4 carry around/out of the house pens (blue ink), and my home pens (blue, black, green, red, turquoise, brown), which brings the total inked count to about 12. I'm trying to reduce some of the duplicates, so the pen does not dry out on me.

[Sasha Royale]

I have only three pens inked.

1. the current pen of rotation from my collection

2. the ever-present Parker 45

3. the cheapie, filled with Heart Of Darkness, for addressing envelopes.

[domnortheast]

 

[thatotherguy1]

The way I see (my) inking habits is that if you take long enough to get to a particular inked pen that it dries out enough to require you to prime the feed, you either need to write more often or you have too many pens inked. The exception to this rule for me was the Jinhao X750- that thing dried out if you looked at it funny (at least mine did).

The obvious solution to this issue is to exclusively buy pens with superb seals in their caps a la Platinum's Slip and Seal

I usually have two pens inked now that I have a Sport- the Sport in my pocket and my full sized pen, which is usually either my Safari or Gama Raja. That said, right now I have all four of my pens inked up (small collection I know). I love the inks almost as much as I love the pens, so I tend to use my Safari as my ink testing pen. I've used every color in the rainbow except yellow at least once I believe, with several blues and a couple of red black/reddish purple inks in there too. My Raja is a dedicated Liberty's Elysium pen.

To the OP- would you mind if I started a spinoff of this thread? Something along the lines of "if you could only own one pen for the rest of your life what would it be"? Technically it's kinda close to this topic and you inspired it, so I thought I'd ask before doing it

[_Stormin_]

I tried keeping just one pen inked for a little while, but I missed the variety at a moments notice. Now I usually have three or four inked at any given time. Enough to keep it interesting, but not so many that it's unmanageable.