Yet Another What Should I Buy Thread

[Jbloodwo]

Ok, I am looking to spend some time finally improving my handwriting and penmanship. I have attached 2 photos of some notes for a Men's bible study i am in that shows the pitiful state of my writing (and possibly spelling).

 

I recently purchased a Cross Aventura to try my hand at using a fountain pen to be a bit more deliberate in my writing. The photos attached were written with than pen. Am am two issues with this pen

 

Issue the first. I feels a bit to light for me. I have had come cheep Meisterstück roller ball knockoffs that i loved the weight and balance of. i am also a huge fan-boy of the pentell sharp Kerry pencils. what i would like is a pen that falls somewhere between the two of these. and as always I am not looking to spend bunch of money on this so the Chinese pens are fully open to me as an option.

 

Issue the Second. I tend to have a heavy had and firm grip with the bone pump to prove this on my left had. because of this combination i have found the nib on the aventura to be a bit broad for me and i would need something that is narrower and will stand up to the presser of my writing.

 

I would also like a second smaller pen that would fit nicely with any of the standard size "field notebooks" this defenitly needs to be as cheep as possible as it will be used for urban outreach and this pen might get lost.

 

pen, and nib advice are greatly appreciated and i do thank you in advance for you time.

[Mr. JW]

Welcome to the world of fountain pens. I have/had some of the same issues as you, so I'll offer what advice I can:

 

1. As far as a new pen is concerned, you really can't go wrong with a Pilot Metropolitan. They run about $15 and come with a squeeze converter. The barrel is made of metal, so you will find it slightly heavier than the cheapo rollerball you mentioned. It only comes in a medium nib, but you can swap it out for a fine nib from a Pilot 78g (which is very, very fine by the way).

 

2. I don't know how broad or narrow the line on the Aventura is having never used one. So, I will leave it to someone else to make that comparison. But, with any fountain pen, you have to back off on the pressure a little. Even a sturdy nib will bend under constant heavy pressure. I had to make the same transition because I was always the type to really bear down with a ballpoint or rollerball. It's a bit of an adjustment at first, but once you have it down, you don't think about it anymore.

 

You may also want to look at a Lamy Safari, another good starter pen that comes in a wider variety of nib sizes. It's costlier than the Metropolitan and will run you about $30 with the converter. The other thing some folks don't like about it is the grip section, which forces you to hold the pen in a certain way.

 

As for a cheap, smaller second pen. Try the Pilot 78g. It costs about 10 bucks, but you have to order it online from Hong Kong. That would also give you the option of swapping out the nib with the Metropolitan.

 

Good luck!

Edited March 5, 2014 by Mr. JW

[Uncle Red]

For the first look at an X750 with either a Bulow nib or a Goulet nib depending on weather you get it from xFountainpens.com or Goulet Pen Company, I've had good luck with both.

 

For the second try a Kaweco Sport with an M nib.

 

To really improve your handwriting you'll need to learn a lighter touch.

[kiavonne]

Main pen, I personally would recommend the Pilot Vanishing Point. Not too light or heavy, retractable nib. Get a fine and you aren't going to have any problems with pressure (I have the death grip from hell and a lot of vp's), but you may prefer a medium. People always bring up the grip with the clip placement, honestly it has never once bothered me. Damn good workhorse of a pen. Cartridges hold a lot of ink, I refill them instead of using a converter. The Decimo version is of the vanishing point is even narrower in the body, but the standard vp took on all my pen writing with ease.

 

Small, inexpensive for the field? The Kaweco sport sounds a good plan, but I'm not sure about a Med nib. Good thing is they are inexpensive enough to try both a fine and a medium. Because I can't stand the short international cartridges, I'd probably be turning it into an eyedropper pen. You might have to be careful with that if you are putting them in your pants pockets or loose in a bag somewhere.

Edited March 5, 2014 by kiavonne

[ac12]

Some thoughts

• Most fountain pens are not meant for writing with heavy downward pressure onto the paper. That is typically a carryover from a ball pen where you had to press hard to write.
  • You can learn to write lighter, but it will take a LOT of practice.
  • Heavy downward pressure also makes it difficult to write characters with nice form, as your letter forming is fighting the friction of the downward pressure on the paper. To get nice letter form, you need to lighten the downward pressure of the pen onto the paper.
• Grip pressure
  • You do not need to hold a pen TIGHT, that just leads to a hand cramp.
• Holding a pen tight along with heavy pressure on the pen will contribute to a cramp in your hand. I used to do this in college, and I could not write longer than 20 min without a cramp developing in my hand. Today with a light grip and light to no downward pressure on the pen, I can write for MUCH longer than I ever could before, and no hand cramp.

• Pen
  • I am not sure of which Chinese pen has a HARD nib.
    Once you lighten your hand pressure, the Chinese nibs should survive OK.
  • The issue to be aware of is that Chinese pens have a much smaller tip than western pens.
    Example my Lamy XtraFine nib is about the size of my Chinese Medium nib.
    And I have not found any Chinese pen with anything larger than a Medium nib.
  • The Parker IM is a heavier pen with I think a hard nib, and you can find it for about $20.
    • If you do not like the Medium nib on the Parker, within 28 days of purchase, you can send it back to Parker for them to exchange the nib and install a Fine or XtraFine nib for you. But you have to send it back within that 28 day window.
• Writing ideas
  What I did to clean up my own handwriting is as follows
  • I bought MANY WIDE ruled notebooks (made in BRAZIL), to practice writing on.
    The made in Brazil is important, as the paper in many of the other sources are not fountain pen friendly.
    WIDE ruled paper lets me write larger and clearer.
    You can also get Staples filler paper (again made in BRAZIL) if you prefer loose paper.
  • I would first practice writing to gradually just lower the amount of force that I gripped the pen with, and the downward force on the pen. You really have to pay attention to this as you write, and the more you write the more it becomes automatic, till today I do not think about how tight I hold the pen, because I don't hold it tight any more.
    • At this point you don't really care about the handwriting, you just want to gain control of your hand.
  • As part of writing I would try to write with my hand and arm, rather than my fingers. I used be a finger writer, not moving my hand at all, until I had to move my hand to the right to reach the next words.
    I learned and tried to move my hand and arm to form the letters. And let me tell you, it was REALLY HARD to do this in the beginning, my writing looked like Cr*p. But gradually I was able to train my hand and arm to move, then to move with control. I'm still not all the way there yet, but I can write with my hand and arm whereas before I could not. This let me write larger and I did not break up my words, to fit the limited horizontal movement of a finger writer.
  • Trying to write lighter AND moving your arm at the same time is difficult, so I would alternate.
    For a half page, pay attention to your grip and pressure. The next half page, pay attention to moving your arm. Keep alternating, and sooner or later things will start to become more natural and automatic for you. It did for me, enough that if I can't move my arm to write (like in a small notebook in your hand), I feel uncomfortable to to have to resort back to finger writing.
  • When I practice, writing, I would just ramble. Like a mind dump diary. Anything I can think of, stuff I did, stuff I need to do, just words even if it made no sense, just to write. Some people would copy/transcribe a book, or poem, as a source of words to write.
    I would write at least 30 minutes a day, sometimes up to 2 hours, just to get in the practice to retrain my muscles.
    • This is similar to learning to drive a car with a manual transmission. You have to train your right hand to move the shift lever, and your left foot to work the clutch, all without crunching the gears and jerking the car.
      Learning to drive a stick shift brings back bad memories for me.
      But, all the practice paid off when I had to rent a MANUAL car, no automatic was available. I could actually drive the car reasonably well. OK the first few days were bad, but I got better as my training practice kicked in.
  • As I gained control of my writing, I would then look at my writing, and if I did not like how a word looked I crossed it out and I wrote it again, and again, and again. What I was doing was to train my hand and arm to form the letter the way I wanted it to look.
    I ran into letter combinations that gave me trouble and I worked on those.
    The word "buy" sometimes I would have only 3 short vertical strokes, sometimes I would have 5. Or transitioning from the letter w to the next letter.
    Again, just working on those combinations.
  • Sometimes I would look at a script chart to see how the traditional letter was formed, because I had forgotten it. Sometimes I would go back to the traditional way, other times I would adopt a different way.
  • I did read about writing training ideas but never followed through on them (probably because I was lazy).
    Like writing a bunch of loops, to get your hand and arm muscles used to doing loops, since that is what most letters are made of.
    And that might be a good idea to help retrain your arm muscles.

There also is a penmanship section of the forum that you might want to take a look at.

As I learned, I got some of my ideas from there.

 

I hope this helps.

gud luk

Edited March 5, 2014 by ac12

[kiavonne]

We need like and/or fav buttons. Good post, ac12.

[Jbloodwo]

THanks for the ideas so far. I actually was just double checking this post before going over to read some of the posts at the penmanship section. As for not using my fingers and instead using my forearms, I have been working on that off and on (mostly off) since Reagan was president, Lady Thatcher was PM, and Putin was spook with the KGB.

[hbdk]

Wow! ac12 that is cool; a lot of very good advice in a short text - I just printed that. Very useful, thanks!

[lourdesgirl101]

+1 on the Pilot Metropolitan. It is less than $20 and metal. They even have animal prints now. The nib is really smooth and only comes in a medium nib. However, Pilot is Japanese so it might run like a Western fine.

 

I have a Kaweco Sport with an M nib as well and I really like it. Plus it uses standard international cartridges but you can also get a squeeze converter for it. If you go with the Classic version you get a 22 gold plated nib. Kawecos are available in EF, F, M, B (and BB in the Ice Sport only).

[ac12]

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THanks for the ideas so far. I actually was just double checking this post before going over to read some of the posts at the penmanship section. As for not using my fingers and instead using my forearms, I have been working on that off and on (mostly off) since Reagan was president, Lady Thatcher was PM, and Putin was spook with the KGB.

 

That is why I had to force myself to practice often and a LOT ... or I would revert to my old way of writing.

Got to build the muscle memory, or as you said "mostly off."