Hi all,

Last year, we had a little incident here, where our cellar and my study got flooded. At the time, I was about to write a few reviews, and I had well over 60 pens inked. And I knew which pen had which ink. Ten pens with different black inks, and 15 with brown inks. And then the usual 30-odd pens for normal writing duties, with all kinds of different inks. So, the storm came and went, and I lost my little sink in my study, for cleaning pens etc., and my study was out of action for a while. Next I got ill, and after some ups and downs, I am finally recovering.

The upshot, in the mean time, was of course that I completely and totally forgot what ink I had in what pen, especially the browns and blacks.... I ended up rinsing and flushing all of them. Waste, isn't it?

So I decided to get myself a little A5-sized, or thereabouts, notebook, with a hard cover of some sort, and write down, with the actual pen, the date, name of pen and ink it contains. Since I continue buying new inks, this seemed like a sensible thing to do. I seem to have developed an ink addiction besides a pen addiction here :doh:.

I did buy a notebook that seemed appropriate, a while back, and finally got around to putting my thoughts into action the night before last.

First, I cleaned and flushed and rinsed quite a lot more pens. Some were finished priming with Waterman Blue Black, some needed a service rinse and flush, and some required to go out of rotation, for a while at least.

I left all of them to dry over night, and yesterday evening I filled all of the ones I wanted inked, with the exception of a few I want to photograph first, and then set about writing down, as indicated, dates, names of pens, and inks they contained.
Eleven pens for now: I still have another 12 inked, yes, browns and blacks , but I don't really know which inks they contain. I can guess, but I'll wait till they are empty, as I don't want to waste more ink.

When I got the notebook out of my drawer, I noticed it was a Clairefontaine notebook. It has a black plastic cover, and contains 96 sheets (192 pages) of 90 grams, lined paper. The lines are purple. And I was amazed I only noticed this was Clairefontaine stuff wel over a month after I bought it .

Anyway, this is what I intend to do now when I want to remember any inks I have in my pens, just add another entry for a new fill. I guess since I have 101 inks already, and another 6 new ones on the way, this may not be a luxury anymore .

My question now is, however, what do you do to remember which pen is filled with which ink? Do you write it down, just memorize, always have the same ink in the same pen, or do you have a different approach?

Please let us know your thoughts and insights on this subject, and thanks in advance for sharing your little secrets .

Warm regards, Wim

I match the ink color to the pen color.

So far, I only have 6 inks of which I am using only 4 right now, so it is not too hard, so far. But, I like your idea in that not only will I have a current record of what ink is in what pen, but if I include a comment area in the notebook, I will have a non-volatile storage device to refer to in case I forget a detail or two (or more).

I foresee more inks in my future.

Jack

Sorry to hear about those incidents.

The biggest number of inked pens I have had is eight: seven carried in a four pen case (four in the slots and three in between them) and my Dani Trio Mikado size Matte Ebonite. It was easy for me to say which ink in which pen, mainly because I tend to use the same combination, for instance,

• Dani Trio Mikado size Matte Ebonite: Noodler's Blue Black
• Dani Trio Tosca: Noodler's Brown
• Omas small black Milord: Noodler's Red Black
• Omas big brown Milord: Rohrer & Klingner Sepia
• Omas Green Saft Paragon: Aurora Blue
• Omas 360 Magnum: Noodler's Blue
• Omas Ogiva Vision: Noodler's Blue
• Sheaffer Intrigue Blue-Blue: Pelikan Violet
• Sheaffer Imperial in Cadmium Yellow: MB red and Sheaffer King's Gold in halves
• Parker black Vacumatic: Aurora Black
• Nakaya Tamenuri Red: Noodler's Sawaro Wine
• Filcao PT LE: Noodler's Green Marine
• ...

But I liked your idea very much. It will help me trace the date I inked the pen.

Thanks!

Alejandro

I too keep a pen-ink log.
Each pen gets it own page, and i keep writing samples of the different inks i've tried,
sometimes with a comment.
If a pen gets a different nib, I start a new page for the pen.
Oh, and there's a table of contents.

hi wimg,

i use waterman's florida blue--it solves all kinds of problems.

:bunny1: :bunny1: :bunny1: :bunny1: :bunny1:

What is it they say about great minds thinking alike?

This is the exact notbook that I have been using to document ink. For each ink I write the name of the pen. On the next line I write the ink, the next line I write the type of nib. When I take a pen out of rotation, or clean it and replace the ink, I place a check mark next to that pen/ink entry. I'll try to take a picture tomorrow and post it here.

I started this method with regular notepad paper. Then I disovered great paper/notebooks.

Wim, I do a number of things that help...

Most every day I take a sheet from my small Clairefontaine or Rhodia pad, date it, and to "exercise" each inked pen I write (for example)
Tempo Red Esterbrook CH, 2556 nib - Waterman Red
I keep these sheets for a few days, so that if I should forget which ink is in which pen when I start in the morning, I can look on yesterday's sheet.

I usually have 3 pens of each color inked. To help tell them apart at a glance, I have:
One container with the inked pens with pointed nibs & non-waterproof ink
One container with the inked pens with italic nibs & non-waterproof ink
One container with the inked pens with italic nibs & waterproof ink
(If I'm doing an ink review or an experiment I have a 4th container for those pens)

I use my notebooks a bit differently than you do. I have a spiral bound Clairefontaine for inks and a loose leaf for pens. I made color tabs for 12 color families. BOTH notebooks are now set up by color. (I used to try to have the pens alphabetically by brand & model, but with umpteen brands & models, dividers were taking up too much room!)

If I change inks without taking the pen out of rotation, I note it in the pen notebook (because in this case my daily sheet wouldn't do me any good for reference unless I changed 1st thing in the morning.) This notebook is also used for notes on how the pen is acting, and how testing or experiments came out.

The ink notebook is used for how the inks act with given nibs, color comparisons, and ink color recipes. (Wish I'd started this as a loose leaf notebook, also.)

Best, Ann

Everytime I put a pen to drink, I write down a line in my notepad. "Lamy 2000 with Pelikan 4001 black". "Parker Sonnet with Waterman Havana". I already have pages and pages and pages.
This is also useful for me to see which inks work better with which pens. For some reason my MB 146 with Parker Quink black is an astonishing combination, both on colour and flow characteristics...
Now, go ahead and call me lunatic for writing such thing on a notepad.. :ph34r:


Oh, wait, I see I am not alone...

I have a lot more inks than pens, usually only two or three pens inked at once. Its not a problem to remember which pen has what ink.

The future plan is to build a pen box similar to those available commercially with a glass lid. My design is to have an extended section at the bottom of each pen's slot where some heavy paper can be folded and placed. The paper has a sample of writing from the pen above it. The paper is replaced every time an ink is chaged in the pens. With the glass lid I can see at a glance which pen has which ink.

Wimg sounds like a lot of ink to flush. If I end up with lots of pens with similar colours in them, like your collection of brown inks, then I would have to note on the paper the ink brand so as not to be confused.

The note pad ideas are a good way to go, particularly if changing inks frequently

I just need more pens to make it worthwile building a penbox.

1. study pen momentarily
2. think "do I want to use this pen? Wonder what ink is in it?"
answer: yes, don't care.
3. Uncap and start writing.

actually i remember the daily users and don't have more than 10 or 12 inked at a time so it's not hard to keep track of.

if I had 60 pens... maybe I'd use a notebook but I've never been that disciplined.

I fall into the KCat line on this one. Plus I usually don't have more than 3-4 pens inked at a time, and my memory isn't *that* bad.

I kind of like the idea of writing a line in a notebook of the pen, ink and nib info each time a new combo is used. But in general, this is a scccarrry thread!! Is obsessive-compulsive disorder common in us fountain pen types?

weepstah

Well, that's the most important thing. I'm glad to hear that you're getting better.


Oh my! That does sound like a catastrophe! I don't think I could dump that much ink.


I only have ten fountain pens inked at this time. Six are my regular rotation pens, one is a red ink pen for marking up what I write and one has a special chore to perform on a frequent but irregular basis. I also have two pens that go out of the house with me.

While I can remember what inks are in which pens I have to keep track of the ink mixtures, their ratios, etc. I have one older pen that has been serving as a test bed for my ink mixing experiments for the past number of months. I write down the inks and their ratios for the mixtures on the notebook pages that I first use them on. But I'm finding that I'm going to need to index this stuff, so I've been using a 3x5 card for that. The 3x5 card is not going to work out because I've got too many ink mixtures now and so I have to figure something out pretty soon.

All of my scribbling is on cheap notebook paper bought a couple of years ago from Staples, when they were having one of thier "Back to School" specials, and the notebooks are made in Indonesia. So while I can remember which pen has which ink I have to write down the locations of the ink samples themselves along with the details of the mixtures.

And so you only have one black pen with always only on black ink in it, and one red pen with always only one red ink in it, etc?

I wonder if it's more complex than that and you just have it all in memory and don't realize it's complex because you can remember it all easily. Just my thought, of course.

I don't think it's OCD, but I must confess that I am thrilled to find others actually talking about things that I do and think about and which are incomprehensible to sane ^H^H^H^H regular people.

I pick up a pen from my inked selection (down to a dozen or so now!), scribble something with it, and then scratch my head and try to remember which ink it was.

I have a few I have been using recently, so it isn't too hard, but some of the violet/purples are a little tricky.

John

Like several others I keep track by not having many pens inked - in my case that is even easier since I only have 9 pens! All are inked and rotated. I have 6 different inks so again, it isn't terribly difficult to keep track. But there is no methodology or rhyme/reason other than my own peculiar choices based on my own not necessarily rational reasons.

Parker "51" flighter - my standby pen currently PR American Blue (just cause I like this ink a lot and like this pen a lot - what more reason do you need?)

Parker "51" burgundy aero - another daily standby PR Midnight Blues (to have a darker contrast for some office work)

Parker 21 black broad - Waterman Florida Blue soon to be replaced with South Seas (this has a very broad wet nib - the only one I have this broad so fun for snails/signatures/etc... and the Waterman's shade more than some others)

Parker 21 red medium - Noodler's Black (this pen was acquired with the intent of using it as my base permanent ink pen as the Vector is a little dry at times when writing on my checks - so I was looking for a wetter pen. This one qualifies and has a very nice medium nib - although I've had trouble with it twice gushing out a blob of ink when I start writing - perhaps the cap sucking ink through the feed when pointed down - who knows so I'm rethinking this a bit...).

Parker green striped duofold - Waterman Green (hey one matches! I am a fan of green ink and for awhile had several green pens all with green ink, now I'm down to one but it's a nice writer and this combination will likely stay fixed).

Parker Vector flighter - Noodler's Black (initially this was my carry anywhere do it all permanent black pen - and it still serves that purpose although I'm marginally happy with it's performance on my checks - other than that it's a great little writer but half the reason I got Noodler's black was to use it on checks...)

Esterbrook red J - PR American Blue (when I get some red ink of some sort and perhaps switch out the medium nib this will change - right now I'm waiting to get some silicone grease to seal the leaky nib/section threads)

Parker black reflex - Quink black (the only cartridges I have and I only have one converter which is in the vector)

Waterman Expert 2000 - Waterman Florida Blue (this fine nib is more like an EF and Florida Blue flows so nicely through it I've never used anything but FB in this pen since my wife gave it to me back in 2000).

All that makes sense to me but is completely open for change and amendment based on more input.

Thank you all for contributing so far.

I do tend to match pen and ink most of the time. As you may know, my pens talk to me - they tell me what ink they want. Of course, pens are fickle, so every so often they want a different diet, especially the Italians .

The diffculty really arose with all those other pens inked for a comparitive ink review or 2, followed by a time lapse.

I must say I like the idea of writing down the nib sizes as well. I haven't done yet so far.

I also like the idea of saving some space for comments on the performance of a particular ink in combination with a specific ink and nib. Thinking about that, I may just intersperse comments like that in the notebook. Often I replenish a whole batch of pens at a time, so it is easy to write down the general details of pen and ink at that time. Specific experiences normally only come to mind later, when properly using the pen and ink combination, for larger pieces of text.

Of course, using just a single ink is totally not done, especially not with Italian pens .

Another few great ideas are putting a check mark next to the entry when a pen is taken out of rotation, and using colour tabs for different purposes. I am going to adopt those ideas as well .

I generally use different pen cases for different purposes already, similar to having different containers I guess, so that is IMO a great idea too. I put pens in pen cases because I tend to carry my pens around to work. I like switching pens and inks a lot in boring meetings, and having a large pen case with many different pens has proved to be a great way to get people to start talking about other things than just work. It opens up work relations to be more personal, I have noticed.

It is also great to see that I am not alone in all this OCD-type of behaviour .

Of course, with less pens inked it is a bit easier to remember which pen has which ink, and writing with it does help too. When not having pens inked for potential ink reviews, I do remember normally which pen has which ink, even when I had 39 inked pens with me . It gets a bit hard, though, when you have 20-odd very similar pens with you, with rather similar nibs, all with different blacks or browns... :doh: Call me mad, a Mad Dutchman...

Anyway, I very much like all your ideas and comments, so please, keep them coming!

Warmest regards, Wim

Whew! Thanks for this thread. Gives me a bit of justification anyway.

I originally started writing pen and ink combos to test various notebooks and paper. But I have used the entries to determine which blue or brown I was using at the time. Recently, I started to write with each inked pen in a dated entry to test issues about skipping/drying up. Not sure if I'll make it a habit, though.

I just counted and I currently have 17 pens inked.

Bill

I solved this problem by being boring - I use LL in everything.

No system, and sometimes I can't remember which pen has which ink. In those cases, I write a bit with the pen, then compare the writing sample to the samples I have of my inks and try to figure it out. Usually works well and jogs the memory (which still works reasonably well, even though I'm approaching 40 ).

The advantage of keeping a log is that if saves you from repeating
experiments long after you've forgotten how an ink behaves in
a certain pen.

I join some of the others in finding this thread affirming. I like trying a variety of inks, so I often forget which ink I have in a pen. I don't keep a formal log or journal, but I use a sheet of paper for each month's rotation (12 to 20 pens) and I note the pen/ink combinations for the month. I jot down the pen and its respective ink with the pen itself.

As an aside, I like to contrast the pen color with its ink. For example, I like to use purple or lanvender ink in green pens, black or brown ink in red pens, red inks in black pens, etc. But I have no set formula for the pairings. I just have fun with the combinations.

I often match ink colors and pen colors, but not always. I "exercise" all of my inked pens every few days. So far, memory works.

I have "only" 18 pens, "only" 15 bottles of ink and one FPN sample vial (already used up the ink in the other vial, and its last penful is half gone), and there are inks and pens that don't get rotated into use very often.

On my first trip to the Fountain Pen Hospital, I asked the salesman which ink was the best and he told me it was Aurora. I bought the black and blue (the only colors they make) and have the black in all my pens with the exception of the Krone Paradox which is filled with the blue. I love both colors. Today I bought three Private Reserve colors: Tanzanite, Lake Placid Blue and Burgundy Mist. My problem is that all my pens are inked and I am flipping out because I want to try these new colors. My problem isn't which pen is inked with which ink...it's... HELP!! I don't have enough pens for my growing collection of inks.....however...hope springs eternal....I may just have to invent an occasion to HINT for a pen here!!

The real question is not "How you remember?" but rather "Why do you remember?"

I have not idea which inks are in which pens, and my fondness of blues/blue-black/black usuallys means I can't tell the shade differences...

Is it ok to just fill the pen a bit so that you will be able to write a small amount before the ink runs out or must you always fill a pen all the way?

I hereby give you full and unfettered permission to use as little ink as you please in any fountain pen. And if anyone gives you any grief about it just tell them that you are entitled, and then refer them to me.

Thank you so very much for your kind permission. It's so nice to rush over to my computer after a long day at work and read all the wonderful posts here. I am lining up my new bottles of Private Reserve and wondering which FPnetwork member to write to and with which color and oh...the stationery.....so you must excuse me.....

This is exactly what I do, especially when trying out new inks... Although I do use a selection of pens for this particular cause.

Once a pen has told me it is happy with a certain ink, the full feed it is....

Warm regards, Wim

Same here. I even imagine my own brew for some of my pen.

I use a small Moleskine Notebook to write down (with the Pen involved):
Pen, nib, ink, date, rating writing experience (scale 5 - 10).

For instance:
Pelikan Piazza Navona (F) with PR American Blue on 11-Oct-06, rating 8.1

When I have time, I put these notes in a spreadsheet so I will be able to select nice combinations from the past (that is if you have more pens and lots of inks and change them frequently, like most of us (?)).

Furthermore, I use this Moleskine to test pens at a retailer, so I see it working on the papaer I use most.

The Legend

So far, I use memory. However this will not be in issue for long because Fedex is delivering today, and I am absolutely confident that one of the bottles will be "the" perfect ink, and I will never have any reason to try another.

I didn't even notice this thread until now... Good question, Wim!

Until I started writing down which ink was in which pen, I had the hardest time remembering! Different inks look different on paper depending on the nib type/width/flexibility/flow. When I write letters, I try to let the reader know which ink I used for that particular letter/paragraph, and it's rather embarassing when you aren't sure

I have a perfect solution to keeping track of which ink is in which pen.

Pick up pen. Write something with it. Look at the color. Scratch head. Try to guess which ink it is. Try to remember what ink I put in the pen. Water-test it to see if it is Noodlers or a Noodlers blend. Go ahead and write with it anyway, whatever ink it is.

Works every time.


John

Choose pen. If it's the Blue Cedar Parker "51", it has my 50/50 Waterman Violet/Florida Blue mix in it. If it's the Waterman 452, it has Diamine Crimson in it. if it's the fine from my Sheaffer Imperial double desk set, it has Slovenian Skrip Red in it. If it's any of my other pens, it has Waterman Blue-Black in it. If it's one of Barbara's pens, all bets are off.

I don't have enough pens to have this problem.

-Hana

Thank you very much. As I said when this thread started, I also keep a Moleskine as a pen/ink log but to take it to the store is one of those simple why-didn't-I-think-of-it ideas. FPN to the rescue, again.

In fact, I'll take it to the next pen show. What a great tool for ready reference of pen or ink or nib comparisons!

Bill

edited for typo