A friend of mine lent me his digital camera, so I decided to show you my small pen collection and my scribblings. I am not a real collector, as some of you might have noticed. If a pen doesn't write as good as I want, I sell it. I have only a few pens because I don't have enough money to develop a real addiction and because I want them to get used quite often.

My current favorite is the green Lamy Safari which I bought on eBay a few months ago for less than $ 10. I think it might be already twenty years old. I replaced the nib and recently Lamy replaced the inner cap. Now the pen is in perfect condition again. The pen has been used regularly for years by the previous owner and I think that's the reason for its nice ink flow. It has also a different feed design than today's Safaris. I noticed that there is only one ink channel under the nib (in modern Lamy feeds there are two). The flawless performance of this pen makes me wonder again if too much flushing can decrease the flow, at least in Lamy feeds. My brother has a Lamy pen, too. He didn't ever flush it, he just puts in a new cartridge when the old one is empty. And the ink flow is very generous. So at the moment I am tempted to say that flushing/cleaning doesn't increase the flow, but regular writing does. Maybe the feed has to be completely soaked in ink before working perfectly.

The Lamy 0.8 nib is a self-ground former 1.5 nib - see this thread.

I have also uploaded an enlarged section of the photo.


Lamy Safari Flame (orange SE) with 0.8 italic nib
and Pelikan Brilliant Brown
Waterman Kultur (light blue) with fine nib and
Waterman Blue-Black
Waterman Kultur (orange) with fine nib and
Waterman South Sea Blue
Lamy Safari (savanna green) with fine nib and
Waterman Blue-Black

Disturbed by his colleague's lack of enthusiasm,
again and again
the Egyptian astrophysicist visiting the observatory
in Mississippi
analyzed the multi-part transcription of
telecommunications from the
Galileo probe for the minimum of errors
and maximum of syzygy.

The Textura line was written with Waterman Blue-Black.

I tried my best, but the ink colours are still slightly off on the photo.

Regards
Hans-Peter

Thats a nice handwriting you got.

Where to begin...

You have very nice handwriting
You can write textura (!!)
You have the Savanna Green Lamy (!!!)

My compliments to you, Hans-Peter!

Is Waterman Blue-Black always that shade or is it the scan? That is a nice colour. How long did it take you to learn textura?

I avoid using flash whenever I can as it does not add any charm to photos at all & adds flare & glare - Try to learn how to switch off the flash ( it took me over an hour & half reading the book on my camera before I found how)
Alternatively use stronger lighting so it doesn't come on automatically

Most cameras seem to have macro on zoom & the results are really nice but you need a tripod ( it looks like you already used one judging by the crisp photos)

Your Handwriting is embarrassingly good btw

Thanks


Thank you for your comments.
The ink colours are still a bit pale on the photo. The Brilliant Brown has a stronger orange/copper shade that the photo doesn't show. The South Sea Blue is a more intense turquoise/light blue in reality. And the Blue-Black has a bit of a green shade. On the photo it looks more grayish than in reality. The camera was probably a bit "confused" because there was so much white in the photo.
I practiced Textura for the first time as a kid when my mum bought me an exercise book for Textura and some dip nibs. It took me only a few days to figure out the letters, but I didn't stick to it very long. However I went back to practice a bit from time to time during the years, so now it has become a permanent feature of my script repertoire.


Thanks!
I made one photo with flash and one without, but the one without flash was way too dark and not as sharp. I didn't use a tripod, but I used the "sharpen" function of my image editing program a bit.

Best regards
Hans-Peter

I gave it another try and have succeeded in producing a better image.
This one shows the ink colours better. I hope it is helpful.

Your handwriting is in Sütterlin, yes? Or a more modern derivative of it?

I need to learn how to write in Sütterlin, especially for handwriting- I'm trying to create some Sütterlin-ish calligraphy for my first born's birth announcement, though the going is slow. Nice handwriting indeed!

Thank you for your comments!
My handwriting is based on German Cursive, strictly speaking a predecessor of Sütterlin (although the word Sütterlin is often used to refer to German scripts in general). You can compare them on this page:
http://www.kurrent.de/_html/uebungen.htm
(German Cursive on the left, Sütterlin on the right).

Best regards
Hans-Peter

Hans-Peter, 10$ for a Savanna Green is a steal! Congratulations. How much for the Flame? got it new? Is the nib of the flame chrome or black? I can't tell from the pic.


You are absolutely right about this:



It's my dilemma: I love pens. And I love to use them. But the more pens I have, the less I use each one...

Sad life.

Cheers,

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

I bought the Safari Flame new for EUR 11 ($ 17) in 2005, just a few weeks after I had read about the 2004 special edition for the first time. At that time it was still quite easy to find on eBay. The nib is chrome. The green Safari has a black one.

Regards
Hans-Peter