Greetings everyone.

I stumbled upon your website a couple of months ago. Wow! What a great resource you have here. I have already learned a lot and expect that I will learn much more. And probably make a few friends as I go along.

I have always been into pens. When I was in school, many years ago, I tried fountain pens. They were great when they were new. But I didn't use them enough, and the ink dried out and they wouldn't write any more, so I would throw them away. So I got a nice ball-point (Cross Century II in chrome) and used it for years. My dad gave me another one as a present one time, still have both. Then I upgraded to the gold model. Used it as my only pen for years. There have been several times at work, when I would run out of ink and didn't have a refill. I would have to immediately go to the store and buy a refill, before I was able to do any more work. I wouldn't resort to using a regular ball point.

Then several years ago I rediscovered fountain pens. I found them to be much superior to the ball-point (but I don't need to tell you that). I also found that if you use them consistently, they don't dry out. And that if they did dry out, you could clean them and they will work again.

I run an IT department for a national finance company. At work I have 6 fountain pens: 3 Cross Townsend (all fine), a Namiki Falcon (soft-medium flex), a Conway-Stewart Shorthand, and a Lamy 2000. All pens are black in color. The 3 Townsends I use for my daily work, these are my "first grab pens". They have different colors of ink: red, blue, and black. My office requires the use of black and red ink only on official papers. I use the blue ink in my day planner along with the red and black. I use the Conway-Stewart if I am taking notes in a meeting, and the Falcon and the Lamy are just for fun. The ink I use at work are all Noodler's: "Heart of Darkness", "Baystate Blue", and "Cayenne", (the Cayenne is close enough to red, so they don't have a problem with it).

At home I have currently inked: Pelikan M400 (my current favorite pen), Waterman Phileas, Rotring Initial, Rotring Core, Lamy Safari, Parker Reflex, Parker Sonnet, Parker 45, Parker 51, Parker Vector, and 4 cheap, unbranded Chinese pens. I don't normally keep this many ready to go, but I just recently got some new pens and some new ink, and well I'm just having fun. I'm certain that I will whittle it down to a more manageable number soon. I do however "force" myself to use each of the pens every day or two. Sometimes just a sentence or two, to keep the ink flowing. Others I use a lot.

I also have a drawer with several new pens I haven't tried out yet. Several which are ready to ink. And a bunch that are in need of repair. I have recently purchased "da book" and will be starting my adventure on repairing pens soon. Cheap sacrificial ones first, obviously. Wish me luck on this!

Current ink supply: Cross black, Cross red, Mont Blanc black, Mont Blanc red, Private Reserve Burgundy Mist, Noodler's Heart of Darkness, Noodler's Cayenne, Noodler's Baystate Blue, Noodler's Whiteness of the Whale, Higgins crimson, Higgins green, Caran D'Ache Sky Blue, Caran D'Ache Saffron, and Caran D'Ache Storm Violet.

Current paper supply: HP 32# Premium Choice Laserjet (my favorite, thanks for all the recommendations in the other threads), Georgia-Pacific 20# Copy paper (I use it in my printer, not so much for FPs), Georgia-Pacific 24# All-in-one Printer paper, Southworth 32# Exceptional Business Paper (ivory), Southworth 24# Fine Parchment Paper (ivory and copper), Wausau 24# Astroparche (natural), and Office Max 32# semi-gloss Color Laser Paper.

As you can see, I am a bit obsessive about fountain pens. My wife (25 years) doesn't understand "the pen thing". She usually uses the ball-points that come 12 for a dollar. Recently I received a catalog from Cross and my wife commented on one of the pens on the cover. So I bought her one for Mother's Day. She has been using it at work, and recently commented that this pen is much nicer than the cheap pens she was using. Maybe, someday, I will be able to get her to try a fountain pen. So far she has refused and said that she will stick to "regular" pens. I tried to explain that a fountain pen "is" a regular pen, but to no avail.

And lastly, my username: woofer. I actually wanted subwoofer, as this is my nick-name in church choir, but it was taken. So I shortened it to woofer, which actually takes in my love for dogs. I have three and I would have more, but our city limits you to three.

Anyways, just wanted to introduce myself. Sorry for being so long winded. I hope you don't mind though, since it is about fountain pens.

woofer

Hi there and welcome to the club. With all those pens and all that ink you certainly don't seem to be a real beginner. But I guess we all have to start somewhere.
Lots of luck getting into the collection of everything new (and old...)

Mike

Welcome to FPN, woofer. It sounds like you're going to fit right in here.

Welcome Woofer!

That's quite an interesting introduction!! Welcome, Woofer I'm sure we'll love you here.

Welcome to the club. You sound like just the slightly demented type that will fit right in here. BTW, I'm a retired IT guy (Unix/Linux sysadmin) and people used to give me strange looks when I'd use one of my fountain pens to take notes in meetings. I just classified them as barbarians.

Take care,
Ron

Welcome to FPN, woofer. I actually use a similar name on a couple of other fora. Used to design audio equipment, y'see? .

Martin

Welcome to FPN, Woofer !!!
You will find a bunch of us fountain pen enablers here !!!!!!

Welcome to the FPN!!

Hello and welcome to FPN.