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Okay. I knew I had to have not come up with this topic out of no where! I must have read something or watched something related at some point in time 🙂 I am a little surprised David didn't call me on this as Lloyd Reynolds is one of his mentors (and he is no doubt sick of me!) 🙂 Page 12 of his "Italic Calligraphy and Handwriting" book, which is the one that I carry and read and study and practice from almost every day. At the bottom of the page, last paragraph reads: "The medium guide line sheet is here recommended for use with the broad nib, because it is customary in rapid personal writing to use a scale of four pen widths instead of the more formal scale width scale of five widths". So put that in your pipe! 🙂

I recently acquired an MB 32p and when I used a Paper Mate branded converter from the 1980s (came in a German made slim stainless FP I bought in Jr. High school) in it the converter is too long to allow the barrel to screw down without the converter being under significant compression. The converter in question appears to be a Schmidt K5, just like pretty much every other European pen makers' branded converters (excepting of course the imprinted brand name on the metal ring). Does anyone here know if there's a go/no-go list of which converters fit these older MB cartridge pens acceptably? BTW, the barrel screws down on a pair of cartridges with only a hint of resistance at the end, probably just barely sufficient to pierce a cartridge if two sealed carts are inserted in the barrel. In light of that result, I'd estimate that this converter is at *least* .5mm longer than a pair of carts... Thanks!

Thank you. I was a bit surprised when I first held and used it. It was expected to be fairly heavy and it was not (un-posted, at least. And it writes quite smoothly too.

Thanks! It is possibly misleading, as I’m not certain it was meant to be entirely transparent. A few pens companies back then had similar sections: the front grip area was painted black, leaving a clear ink window on the rear portion. Congratulations, that’s an iconic pen.

Today I inked up an EF pastel purple Chinese clicky pen that @Sailor Kenshin sent me with reconstituted Geha Purple (or Violett). I also used my glass pen for swatches, and my 1928 jade Lady Duofold.

That Sakae TP press release covers multiple products, including both 160-page and 96-page ‘Soft cover note’ notebooks.

Thank you for letting me know that! I am thinking of visiting my nearest one soon, so I will make sure to take some good paper with me! Really though, one would rather expect that a vendor of ‘luxury goods’ that include fountain pens to spend the tiny bit of money to have fountain-pen-friendly paper in its stores! 🙄 I mean, how else are they going to ‘show-off’ their own ‘luxury’ inks? Idiocy!

@penwarrior32The OP answered this question upthread.

@MercianMontblanc boutiques have a reputation of stocking sample writing paper that exhibits feathering and other undesirable effects when subjected to the nib of a fountain pen, yielding unreliable line width comparisons.

Wondering how is the writing experience. Do you intend to ink the pen? Beautiful pen!!!

@marlinspikeI must confess that as an enthusiast of Vacheron Constantin, and an admirer of their vintage ultrathin skeletonised manual calibre 1003 and automatic calibre 1120, I have never been seduced by Montblanc’s watches, save for their aforementioned 1999 skeleton model. But it is good to know that negotiation for Montblanc watches is possible, knowledge which might come in handy were I to consider gifting a pen-and-watch combination for a Montblanc connoisseur.

Indeed! For some reason I thought the were 80 or 90 pages, not sheets. Thank you!

In terms of actual sales I believe the pen has always been worth a fair bit more than the watch. The best thing about Montblanc watches is if you can find the one you want at a seller who wants it gone within 1 year, you can get a great price.

Ah, Visakhapatnam! Site of yet another, er, glorious recent performance by the England cricket team 😁 35 degrees Centigrade, while being too hot for me to feel comfortable, should not be hot enough to threaten the plastic of a Parker 45’s grip section. But I would still advise you to not leave one in a parked car on a hot summer day!

@da vinciNot to mention that it is, to date, the only skeleton pen model by Montblanc with such a delicately thin metal overlay to better showcase every other engraved metal surface on the pen.

Well, English has Celtic, Brithonic, Latin, Old German, Danish/Old Norse, Norman French, Dutch, middle German, and now Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Patois elements. There are undoubtedly some others that I’ve forgotten. The odd smatterings of Persian and Greek and Arabic for example. I reckon it ain’t just our Celtic maternal lines that were, er, happy to give a warm welcome to (& learn enjoyable tricks from) exciting new tongues….

Isn’t kanwrite shipping from USA now?

Just asking people here in Vizag causes them to say a 2 rupee pen is better or 0.024 dollars. But it is definitely not 50 degrees here it’s around 35 ish

Are you insinuating that our ancestral Celtic mothers 'slept around'?

The Duofold Vacumatic pens (aka ‘Duovacs’), with the transparent material between the coloured celluloid stripes are, IMO, some of the prettiest pens ever made!

@marlinspikeAfter having released the 75 Years of Passion and Soul Skeleton Watch to accompany the Skeleton Pen (the pen being recently received after a five-year wait by @mosh_2k7), one would have thought that Montblanc would be recognised for horology, but I suppose a single model, no matter how spectacular, was insufficient.

I agree! The English word ‘nib’ is related to words for the ‘beak’ or ‘bill’ of a bird, which words also get used colloquially for ‘nose’. It seems to have developed because the shape of the cut end of a quill used for writing slightly resembles the shape of the end of the bill of a goose or swan or duck. English is the unattributable child of many fathers. This often means that it is capable of expressing fine variations in meaning that other languages simply cannot*, but its jumbled-up heritage also makes its spelling conventions a ludicrously-idiosyncratic nightmare, and make it - in many ways - a Silly language! 🤪 * E.g. whereas English has ‘brain’ available for the grey ‘hardware’ and ‘mind’ available for the ‘software’, French has only cerbeau, a word for the ‘hardware’, and no separate word for the ‘software’.

Oh bummer. It was an interesting color, if a little on the dry side. Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Waterman Edson, green with a fine point and the original converter. Actually only semi-impulsive acquisition as I have considered this one of my grail pens for quite a while. happily traded three other pens of less interest for the Edson.