Being a newbie to fountain pens, I want all I see, of course. Yesterday I had to buy 4 boxes of stuff to get two fountain pens. Both are what a little research seems to say are School Pens. #304 nibs on both. One has a Insurance company ad on it. Both rounded ends with stainless caps and clips.

Cleaned them in room temp water with a little detergent. Both had empty cartridges and I cleaned those. There was a bottle of Higgins Blue drawing ink in the box. But the cartridges were Skripsert Blue. I really don't know what ink had been in them. A good cleaning and then I filled the cartridges. One with Noodler's Sequoia and the other with Noodler's Baystate Blue.

Imagine my shock when I discovered that they write really well. I don't need to spend a bunch of bucks to get a nice writing fountain pen. Four boxes of stuff cost me $10. One of these was sitting in a Parker box. I think I did all right.

$5 each dosn't sound bad to me.

DON'T put the Higgins in in the pens.

Good point. I was already suspicious of it.


As the day wore on, the one with Sequoia in it leaked. Using unknown aged cartridges are not without their hazards I see. Nobody has asked why my fingers are colored yet.

School pens are famous for leaking. You can still buy refills and Sheaffer makes a cartridge converter now too. At least they did last time I checked.

The school cartridge pens don't really leak, but they do have a juicy nib that needs a little attention now and then. I often would wipe the nib area and inside the cap with a tissue when I was a kid and used these pens a lot. Wish they still made them, or a variant of same.

Dave

Believe me when I say, you are not alone. I did the same and long story short, I atleast have pens for parts