Here is a web site to answer a few questions posted by fellow members of FPN. I've run out of space for this in my FPN allocation of storage, and my server is not exactly built to have many hits. I hope it survives for at least a few days...and if not, my apologies in advance for the server's failure.

http://home.earthlink.net/~noodlersink/index.html





Click here for photos too large to fit otherwise.

Excellent. Thanks for the info.

If you're looking for a way to host massive amounts of text and photos with the power of Google serving it up and a cost of zero, you might consider Blogger / Blogspot. You have total control over the design of the pages, presentation, and layout, and you can allow or prohibit comments as you prefer.

For high performance photo serving you might consider Flickr, which has the power of Yahoo's huge network pipes to serve your content at lightning speed. (I regularly see 4 megabits) They offer a free service or for $25 a year you can have unlimited photos, unlimited bandwidth, and your photos are never altered in size or any other way, and are available for download in their original form, and they can be embedded in your blog-based presentations.

I use both and am very pleased.

PS. The Google ads you see on my blog are there because I put them there. The space was otherwise wasted and it can make me a little extra change, but the default is no ads whatsoever.

Flickr also allows for massive uploads of images and does auto-resizing.

Thanks for the cool images, Nathan. I'm trying to figure out how to buy all the remaining available colors (though I don't have access to some of the Chinese colors like the multi-density).

Ahh, but auto-resizing is optional which most photo hosting services do not offer. Most of the rest always resize to sizes convenient to their system and when they do you lose some quality. I spent a very long time joining and researching providers because it's a huge investment of time to upload, catalog, tag, geo-tag, etc. thousands of photos and I waited until I found what I wanted. At the time I chose Flickr, only two providers, Flickr and Web-Shots offered retention and download of the raw unmodified original photo. For me that was important for archiving. Naturally, they automatically make available five or six different sizes that people can view, up to and including the raw original, if you give permission for other users to view the original, which I do.

Great info and a very reasonable solution.

Thanks very much for taking the time to develop such an ink the first place as well as sharing the details behind the decisions made.

Thanks, Nathan, for the information. You have done so much for this hobby of ours. (I'm sure I am not alone in drooling over the maki-e pens, whenever they may be available. )

Lisa

Great info! It's cool to see how things got a start.

And really cool pen. Parrots and lots of color, and lunar dust; yep, cool pen.

Questions:

Where would someone find the rollerball pieces to interchange with the eyedropper? And, have you modified the highlighter for the task or the fountain pen?

Very interesting post, thank you.

Thanks for the information.

Quoted question is from the linked page in Nathan's first post.



I think freeze resistance is useful for people in a number of areas of the country (and cold climates in other countries) and the original "freeze proof" version is probably of significantly more limited use. Therefore, I'd say: solve the more common problem.

That said, I don't have ANY of them, because worst case, my ink wouldn't freeze here in California -- it just doesn't get that cold in my part of the state.

Used rollerball pens that are not worn heavily or clogged will be suitable - assuming they have not been tossed out yet. Most people have a few dried up rollerballs in their desks... You might notice that MANY rollerball pens have exactly the same housing and steel tips - they are produced by very large companies...then they "filter down" to very different brands of pens (often identical tips are on a $1 pen as found on a $3,000 pen!). Many roller ball refills "made" by different brands all have tips that came from the same company - most have a felt core central feed with fin regulators outside of it. Pull it out with needle-nose pliers...soak a while in rubbing alcohol or household ammonia - and refit with the highlighters felt core feed. If you tire of using a rollerball tip and would like the highlighter again...pull it off the felt core and replace with the highlighter tip. It works yet again. Provided the felt core touches the ball the roller will be fed ink. Likewise, provided the highlighter felt touches the felt core it will also be fed ink. The fountain pen nib/feed unit will also interchange with the highlighter unit upon the same pen (some retailers do carry extra highlighter tips for sale that are made by the Platinum Pen Co.).

I never have collected rollerballs with the exception of the rollerball fountain pens of the war era to approx. 1964 (even Esterbrook made one!). When a rollerball has a pure ruby bearing encased in gold with a gold wire feed - that seemed like it was far more unique and difficult to make than the ubiquitous rollerball pens that all exit similar machines and near identical factories by the millions. I try not to be a pen snob....but the fountain pen gets collected/admired, and the rollerball remains an object mostly for tinkering. Interestingly....when it comes to the length of use the fountain pen almost always outlasts and outwears the rollerball. The rollerball as a mechanism is quite dependent upon a disposable culture.

This is a great thread with lots of interesting info. Thanks to all.

I suppose then, that it's a great thing for me that before I actually narrowed my collection focus to fountain pens, I bought any kind of pen that struck my fancy and have (quite literally) boxes of them! I knew they'd come in handy some day. :-)

Thank you very much for sharing your expertise. It's very much appreciated.