All Activity

I've given away a nice Safari M and a CPM1 or such, both steel nibs that worked just fine. I wanted to hook a Coroner doctor into fountain pens. I have a 1.5 Lamy Joy...a Safarie with a long tail for a desk pen holder...It is steel and works fine. I don't believe the gold is softer myth. I have a Lamy1990 Person with a 18k nail that Pendelton Brown took from an absolutely no line variation OB to a beautiful CI B. I have a more springier than the other two new nibs, Z55 I think it is...the same nib that impressed the hell out of me on a Imporium that I tested in a pure Lamy shop The steel M nib on my studio was just fine a nail but smooth....was it a butter smooth nib...I don't know...I don't chase butter smooth. I like the level just under that.. I got that gold springy nib in B. Any pen that arrives by mail may have a misaligned nib, in they are sent with luck in a display box....not a shipping box. I have many rants on that. The real good thing about Lamy's is many of the nibs can be swapped out with a bit of scotch tape...and if not gold, Steel Nibs are very affordable. use to be a long time ago $7.00, so would think $10 now. I was astounded by prices higher in gold for M, F, EF than for B. Twice as high when I bought mine. If you want a spring nib if you can dind a discontinured Z55, that is better thanthe other two Z56 and Z57..They are springier than the steel nibs I've tried from Lamy....and the old gold Persona nib. Reports say the Z? 56 and 57 are not quite as springy as the discontinued Z55.

Hi Today I present you with the most beautiful fountain pen that Montblanc has ever produced! It is the 1999 Montblanc 75th Anniversary Limited Edition Skeleton Fountain Pen! I still remember the day when I first saw images of this exquisite writing instrument online back in 2009 and I have been dreaming of owning this writing instrument ever since. My dream finally came true in 2019 Due to work commitments and the Covid pandemic/Brexit, I wasn’t able to collect the writing instruments until last week. This writing instrument is even more beautiful and stunning in real life! The attention to detail, the craftsmanship, the work is absolutely impeccable! I will share some photos of this gorgeous writing instrument with you Kind regards Mohsin

If I were you I would buy bottled inks, and use the converter that came with your pen. Why? Because: ink bought in bottles costs only about 1/5-to-1/4 of the price of the same amount of ink bought in cartridges; buying ink in bottles frees you from ‘vendor lock-in’; it enables you to use far more colours/types of inks than the now rather-limited range that Parker still makes; Also, and perhaps even more importantly: filling your pen by ‘sucking ink up’ with the converter actually helps to keep your pen’s feed clean! This is because doing that means that are moving ink in both directions through the feed, and (in comparison to the rate at which it flows while you are writing), you are moving it fairly rapidly. This helps to prevent any ink from drying-out inside the feed, and/or deposits potentially building-up inside the feed’s channels/fins, and thereby restricting ink flow. The converter is also a brilliant tool if you wish to flush/clean-out your pen thoroughly, e.g. when changing types/colours of inks. This is particularly true for pens like the Duofold, whose nib/feed assembly is not as easy to remove as the nib/feed unit of e.g. a Pelikan piston-fill pen, or a Parker Sonnet. Those pens’ nib/feed units can be unscrewed manually. For clarity: you don’t need to ‘obsessively’ clean-out your pen all the time, let alone dismantle it to do so! You might want to just run cold tap water into the top of its grip section to ‘flush’ or ‘rinse’ it, once every few months. This is what manufacturers used to recommend for pens in continual use. OK, I flush my pens every time they run out of ink. But that is because I like to ‘rotate’ between my various different pens, and between different colours (& types) of inks. I use dye-based inks, acidic inks, alkaline inks, very-acidic iron-gall inks, and I use some pigment-based inks. Several of these different types of inks do not ‘play nice’ with each other! Not only does any individual pen that I own therefore tend to sit unused for months at a time, but I want (or rather, I need) to avoid the prospect of any chemical reactions occurring inside any one of my pens between any residue from its last fill of ink, and whatever I eventually put into it next time.

Is in my Amazon basket.. Waiting for the Eagle to fly.

contained liqueur samples

I just saw this post ... I bought a Waterman 12 last year for this feed specifically, which I had never seen before, and I was curious as well, so I made some research and it appears that this is a 1916 patent by William Ferris (the same guy that got so many Waterman patents) this patent says that the improvement is meant to help regulate the ink flow (in a nutshell) and better control air bubbles. But that portion is very thin and really looks fragile, I don't think it can easily be knocked out with a block, like we do with all vintage feeds ... I wouldn't take the risk, in any case, so taking it out from the front seems to be the only option, like with the Lucky Curves. If an expert repairer could chime in ...

Have you checked repair suppliers like The Pendragons or Pentooling? They sell vacumatic filler wrenches for about £30/$30.

whose cordial invitation

The black-&-white one reminds me of the ‘Op Art’ of Bridget Riley. And of the traditional British sweets called ‘Everton Mints’ 😁

And who could blame them? 🤷‍♂️ In my experience though, this has been true for the prices that get charged for most things here since long before the nasty ‘B’-word happened. E.g. in the days before the www, Brits who travelled to north America often reported back that the US price tags for e.g. Levi’s jeans would bear the same number after their ‘$’ sign that the tags in UK shops bore after the ‘£’ sign. And this was back in the days when £1 was nominally ‘worth’ between $1.65 & $2. It was common for people going on holiday to e.g. NYC to travel outwards with at least one suitcase that was only half-full, so that on the return trip to the UK their cases had enough room to hold all the new clothes that they would buy able to buy far more cheaply in the US. The UK does have lots of good things going for it, but it is a Silly place.

sponsored by Solerno

Clip on pen cap has become slack and wont spring back. Can this be repaired? Any help/advice much appreciated

Yes, there is also a 100y LE green ink. However, not my cup of tea ,-)

A couple of Shawn Newton pens...with Esterbrook nibs.

The Getty-Dubay writing system in the book you have ordered is a version of ‘Italic’ script. It is based on the hand that was developed by a Papal scribe for use in the Vatican Chancellery during the Italian Renaissance, as a script that would be quick and easy for officials to write, and still be easily-legible. Both of which factors are important when creating official records by hand. Various versions of Italic script have been developed, by various people. The main distinguishing feature of Italic scripts (apart from a slight slant) is that they don’t feature the loops and flourishes that are components of many ‘Cursive’ scripts. There are other Italic scripts available. Herebelow are links to two threads about them that I have participated in, and which contain links to information about/downloadable font sets of the scripts in question. First, a thread that discusses the handwriting models created by the Ministry of Education of the government of France: The French Ministry of Education allows one to download the fonts for both of its handwriting models in versions that are ‘loopy cursive’, and in versions that are loop-free italic. The fonts include versions that print out background lines, so one can create one’s own practice sheets on one’s computer, and then print those out. There’s a link to PDF that shows all the styles of each model. Personally, I like the ‘italique’ version of ‘Écriture B’. Secondly, a thread about the cursive italic style that was developed for use in the schools in Sweden in the 1970s: There are also other threads about Italic scripts on this board of FPN, some of which may be more-informative than those two, or offer other writing models that you may prefer. If I were you I would look to see if you can hunt any down with the ‘Search’ function at the top of this page Slàinte, M.

That's probably revenge for Brexit

I imagine the real prices that actually count for anybody are those listed in the site which appear after you choose the currency or country in question offered up top at the right.

Lately I've been doing small "bets" for mostly under $50 interesting pens, to avoid ending up paying almost 30% in taxes and import duties; most but not all work, like this, my first Parker 51 that superficially looks in good nick. It's a Vacumatic, unfortunately it doesn't draw ink; I've already identified a seller with an entire filling system and some wrenches to disassemble it, it might take me a few months to save for that, those wrenches are not cheap.

I find I write much better with a Fine or EF or even finer nib and a little feedback; pens like the Lamy 2000 are too smooth for me. I don't pay a lot of attention to the attributes of ink, mostly because I don't branch out and experiment very much. I have around 140 bottles or samples of ink, lots of different colors, but they are all dye-based, with limited shading, almost none with sheening, and no sparkly stuff. Some are wetter than others, but I'm not sure how much difference that makes to my writing. I just know that with some pens writing is a great experience, with others it's a struggle, and the majority of pens are somewhere in between.

Included a gold (not sure whether it’s real gold) CC. There were also 2 black cartridges. I plugged in one and using it , very smooth writing. Now to improve my handwriting!

Thank you for sharing this @SLinkster

I’ve tried varying the location/currency on the Montblanc website I used an online currency converter to compare the listed price for each currency/territory that I checked against the price listed for GBP/UK. None of the currencies/locations that I have tried lists a price that is as-high as the one for the UK 🙄

Thanks I'll check them out.