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New Haven Register: Don't Write Off Fps Just Yet!


mberman14

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Of course not!

 

Fountain pen are still a "passion" product. It's less practical, much more expensive and writes only marginally better than a solid gel rollerball.

I really do love my FPs, but saying they will take the place of actual tools is being very subjective.

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Of course not!

 

Fountain pen are still a "passion" product. It's less practical, much more expensive and writes only marginally better than a solid gel rollerball.

 

I really do love my FPs, but saying they will take the place of actual tools is being very subjective.

I actually have to politely disagree. Back in high school when I relied on gel rollerballs, I would go through Pilot G-2 refills about once every two weeks. At $7 for a pack of 2 refills, that quickly added up. If all I wanted was an affordable writing instrument, a Pilot Metropolitan and bottle of Parker Quink would be more cost effective after about a month. While rollerballs work great, I honestly can't write with one for longer than two hours (kinda a problem when you have back-to-back 3 hour finals) with one, and about one hour of intensive scribbling with a ballpoint without hand fatigue. Trust me when I say that if you ever find the pen perfect for your hand, you will notice a significant improvement in writing quality versus even the best of rollerballs.

 

I was also afraid of taking fountain pens around with me everywhere as I've always feared leaking and ink burping, but now I'm confident using fountain pens anytime from journalling, letter writing, notetaking, exam essays, and even lab reports (surrounded by beakers of organic solvents and blackworm guts).

 

Of course, it is almost impossible to go a day without my smartphone and laptop, and I'm pretty sure we will never see a day where people will roam the streets with Parker '51's clipped on a shirt pocket and using them as a primary communication method again.

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”

Graham Greene

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I was chatting with the owner of Daly's Pen Shop (Milwaukee, Wisconsin--opened in 1924) the other day. He said it's been hard to keep the Pilot Metropolitans, Lamy's, and TWSBI's in stock. He has a lot of young adults buying them up. It's been a renaissance for a business that was going the way of the dinosaur. He sells very few of the high end brands/models anymore.

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It's less practical, much more expensive and writes only marginally better than a solid gel rollerball.

I really do love my FPs, but saying they will take the place of actual tools is being very subjective.

 

I must also politely disagree.

 

Fountain pens have been practical, inexpensive tools for me ever since I could join up letters. I don't have a biro or anything like that, because I don't have any need for one. So for me, a pen is a fountain pen, and a fountain pen is not a statement of anything, just a workaday tool that writes the way I prefer.

 

You may, however, be coming from a world in which a fountain pen is an exotic luxury good rather than a standard stationery item, which would explain why our outlooks are so different.

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Reverting briefly to the Yomiuri Shimbun article reprinted in the New Haven Register, I would like to add to this thread a heartfelt commendation of the writer.

 

A fairly large proportion of articles about the return of the fountain pen whose links are posted to FPN are written by journalists who are, in the FPN opinion, idiots. Or very unevenly informed. More bent upon writing a shopping guide to luxury goods than a simple account of what is going on. Not even a good shopping list.

 

Although its purview is limited, this article is in another league.

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Of course not!

 

Fountain pen are still a "passion" product. It's less practical, much more expensive and writes only marginally better than a solid gel rollerball.

 

I really do love my FPs, but saying they will take the place of actual tools is being very subjective.

 

I have to agree. Fountain pens are adored by a few (a very very few) - mostly us on FPN, and some others as well. However, when you take a look at the real world, they are practically nonexistent. There's even a thread on FPN about how many people have seen others actually using FPs in their day-to-day lives. Most people haven't. There are threads about seeing FPs in movies and on TV. Why is it such an attraction? Because it rarely happens. It's a nice thought, but FPs will never take the place of standard writing utensils - pens (G-2s, Rollerballs, day-to-day writers, etc.) If anything will take their place, it will be the stylus, or some other type of digital implementation.

Franklin-Christoph, Italix, and Pilot pens are the best!
Iroshizuku, Diamine, and Waterman inks are my favorites!

Apica, Rhodia, and Clairefontaine make great paper!

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I was chatting with the owner of Daly's Pen Shop (Milwaukee, Wisconsin--opened in 1924) the other day. He said it's been hard to keep the Pilot Metropolitans, Lamy's, and TWSBI's in stock. He has a lot of young adults buying them up. It's been a renaissance for a business that was going the way of the dinosaur. He sells very few of the high end brands/models anymore.

 

I stopped by Janoff's, a typewriter / school supply / art supply store near Columbia University. They have heavy demand for a $30 pen that looks like the Pilot Metro but seems to be made by Cross. Their side-wall is stocked with them. Their front counter also displays a sample of more expensive pens. While I was there a professor walked in to buy another of the Cross pens (with converter)...she uses different pens for different ink colors.

 

The fountain pen has outlasted the typewriter -- the device that killed off use of the fountain pen for school papers. The market seems to be shrinking for high-priced refillable ballpoints: the device that cut into fountain pen use for note-taking. Before about 2000, customers, account managers, and techies used Cross, Papermate, Waterman, and Mont Blanc ballpoints. In the last fifteen years, people seem, more and more, to use throw-away ballpoints.

Washington Nationals 2019: the fight for .500; "stay in the fight"; WON the fight

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FPs are the mode of writing that has the lowest environmental footprint. An instrument that lasts longer than a lifetime, a refill that comes in a glass bottle and lasts an year (more if you get those pilot 360ml bottles) and no wastage. Ball points are a legacy of the wasteful 20th century and have no place in an aware society. FPs will take over as the instrument of choice in the near future. The meek shall indeed inherit (if Smartphones dont eliminate the written word altogether!)

A lifelong FP user...

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I use FPs exclusively. It is a choice i am very comfortable with. BPs are used only when there is a need to write on carbonised paper.

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The economy is on an upward spring. People (such as myself) who are new to fountain pens are splurging a little more on "passion products". A fountain pen has more soul than a throwaway Bic.

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I use FPs exclusively. It is a choice i am very comfortable with. BPs are used only when there is a need to write on carbonised paper.

There are fountain pens that do that, too... look for a Manifold nib. I keep one inked with ESSRI all the time, as it lets me use my carbonless checks perfectly well.

--

Lou Erickson - Handwritten Blog Posts

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