How Many Pens Do You Have Inked Up At The Same Time?

[Martini1R]

I don't have a large collection...by no means. But I wonder if I ink up too many pens at a time I would end up having some taking months (like 2-3) to finish all the ink inside. It's not very good, is it? I am afraid some may just dry up inside making it difficult to clean.

 

Recently I have a MB piston filler with the lavender violet. I have soak the nib part over night, flushed it over 10 times, I even used some hand soap diluted into the water... it still comes out as pink drops of water. The pen writes but I am not sure if I ever gonna flush it clean. I don't want to twist the piston like a 100 times creating tear and wear unnecessarily too.

 

So for my more expensive pens, especially piston fillers, I think I would only ink up 1 or 2 at a time. CC pens I don't worry about. May be I can have 3 to 6 inked up, half filled.

 

Do you guys have any advice for me?

[Sandy1]

Hi,

 

Not so much advice as a sharing of my personal practice:

 

The only pens I keep inked-up for more than a three or four days are my daily writers. When I'm in the office I use a Parker Sonnet loaded with Quink Blue-Black with Solv-X. When I'm in the field I use a rotring 600 with an iron-gall ink, backed-up by a Pelikan P99 Technixx with Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black. Those pens have the nib+feed rinsed every day before and after filling.

 

Otherwise I choose my ink+pen+paper combo on a per document basis. When I finish that document I cleanse the pen, most often within one day but it can be up to four days (extra postage required for four-day tomes.)

 

I am not one to have many pens 'in rotation' nor do I let inked-up pens sit idle.

 

As such, I reckon at least half of the non daily writer ink I purchase goes down the drain.

 

That said, if I'm only writing an A4 or two, I may not use an FP but switch to a dip pen with FP ink, so very little of the ink used is surplus to the task.

 

Then again, when I'm sampling a new ink, perhaps 80% of the ink used is surplus to that task and there can be a tailback of pens to clean-up. (I have trouble imaging how to suss-out an ink using but a wee tiny ittybitty 2ml sample.)

 

__ Edit to add: As you seem to be concerned about accelerated aging of your piston fillers' mechanism, consider pairing those pens with inks that clean-up quickly and/or augment your clean-up regimen with a DIY chemical pen clean-up solution of very dilute plain ammonia+surfactant or the commercial counterpart, such as J.B.'s Perfect Pen Flush, Koh-i-Noor Rapido-Eze, etc.

 

Bye,

S1

Edited September 2, 2015 by Sandy1

[oneopentrail]

Every Day Carry

 

Three fountain pens fully inked

 

Parker 51, Medium - blue/black ink.

Sheaffer Prelude, Medium - black ink

Parker 45, Fine - black ink.

 

One ball pen.

 

Parker frontier - blue (this is a last resort pen)

 

Occasional Use

 

Six (6) Parker pens with green, purple, blue/black & black.

Use converters

Usually 5 - 10% full

 

No more than 10 inked seems to be the sweet spot. Many more then they don't get used enough and nibs may dry.

 

Note

 

I recently sold a bunch of pens that I was not using, did not feel right or would wish I was using something else while using said pen. These pens would not get into the rotation or get picked up so would dry out and then the bore of having to get them to write. Just. No.

 

It is better to have a few good pens than 100 average pens. Even if you only have 3 or 5.

 

Decide on a color for a pen and stick to it. This requires some time and thought. No point having purple in it if you need to write formal letters, but then if you write notes with that pen then no problems.

 

You can also have 'sacred' backups to your favorite pens so you still use the model, but still have a really nice one on display or in a draw that you never ink to potentially pass on to future generations.

 

The main thing is to enjoy the pens you own or collect and ink occasionally.

Edited September 2, 2015 by oneopentrail

[Wolverine1]

I have 2 pens inked up, and sometimes 3 pens. No more that 3 FPs, with a Cross BP pen and a pen filled with a Pilot G2 refill.

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I don't worry about having a pen inked for over a month as long as it's actually getting used frequently. And unless a pen is simply not working, I'll write with until it's dry, then flush and clean it if I'm putting it away. I don't like dumping half a milliliter of ink out of a pen just because I want to move on to something else.

 

Right now I have more pens inked than I think is ideal, six of them. Two to four would be more reasonable, and I do expect to have emptied a couple of them within a week or so. Still, I'm using all six, and am not really worried about the ink drying out in them. A lot depends on the individual pen.

[Tas]

I've cut back

 

Only around twenty now.

[melodiousb]

I have a soft limit of three pens at a time. When I empty one, I fill another. It's a soft limit because sometimes I end up having a fourth or even a fifth pen inked up--maybe because I lent someone a pen and got it back still half full, or because I can't wait to try out a new pen or a new ink. I don't worry about it too much--I'm always aiming for three, so the number shrinks back down.

 

For me, this is a good way to have some variety available at any given time, to use most of my pens on a pretty regular basis, and to not leave anything lying around inked but unused.

[Ted A]

I try to keep it under 14. Most of the time it's around 10. But I do make it a practice to write at least a line or two with each pen every day. Just to practice and see the ink sometimes. Often journaling and switching by page or paragraph or as I feel the need.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The flock of Pelikans in my pocket (now up to 5) is kept inked at all times: blue in the blue M200, black in the black/charcoal M150, red in the red demo M200, green in the green M200, and brown in the brand new "cognac" M200.

 

The Wearever that's also in my pocket is theoretically inked, but unlike the Pelikans, it tends to dry out.

[Martini1R]

Thanks for the stories guys!

[Martini1R]

I try to keep it under 14. Most of the time it's around 10. But I do make it a practice to write at least a line or two with each pen every day. Just to practice and see the ink sometimes. Often journaling and switching by page or paragraph or as I feel the need.

 

That sounds like me. I don't have 14 inked up but I would try to write with every inked pen at least once in 2-3 days. I do switch pen (ink) by paragraph when I journal as well.

 

Hi,

 

Not so much advice as a sharing of my personal practice:

 

The only pens I keep inked-up for more than a three or four days are my daily writers. When I'm in the office I use a Parker Sonnet loaded with Quink Blue-Black with Solv-X. When I'm in the field I use a rotring 600 with an iron-gall ink, backed-up by a Pelikan P99 Technixx with Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black. Those pens have the nib+feed rinsed every day before and after filling.

 

Otherwise I choose my ink+pen+paper combo on a per document basis. When I finish that document I cleanse the pen, most often within one day but it can be up to four days (extra postage required for four-day tomes.)

 

I am not one to have many pens 'in rotation' nor do I let inked-up pens sit idle.

 

As such, I reckon at least half of the non daily writer ink I purchase goes down the drain.

 

That said, if I'm only writing an A4 or two, I may not use an FP but switch to a dip pen with FP ink, so very little of the ink used is surplus to the task.

 

Then again, when I'm sampling a new ink, perhaps 80% of the ink used is surplus to that task and there can be a tailback of pens to clean-up. (I have trouble imaging how to suss-out an ink using but a wee tiny ittybitty 2ml sample.)

 

__ Edit to add: As you seem to be concerned about accelerated aging of your piston fillers' mechanism, consider pairing those pens with inks that clean-up quickly and/or augment your clean-up regimen with a DIY chemical pen clean-up solution of very dilute plain ammonia+surfactant or the commercial counterpart, such as J.B.'s Perfect Pen Flush, Koh-i-Noor Rapido-Eze, etc.

 

Bye,

S1

Sandy, I admire your dedication of cleaning out pens on a daily basis. That's something. Yeah, I normally only use Iro on my nicer pens and MB inks on MB. I guess it's time for me to use some pen flush. I have a box of the platinum pen flush, may be I'll finally open it now. I'll also try out the pen plush you mentioned. Thx.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

I have three pens inked up, and I generally rotate through them on a daily basis, i.e. I use pen 1 today, pen 2 tomorrow, pen 3 the day after, etc.

[maxmet88]

So, personal pens, i.e. the ones I use at home or when I go to a coffee shop or something, to write for myself? Those, I'll have at least two inked up at a time, maybe three. If my TWSBI is one, it'll be two, just cause there's more ink than in a CC pen

 

My Al-Stars and Safaris do double duty as work pens, and I'll only ink up one at a time, but I also only just barely fill it, enough to get me through the night, basically, because my nurses love seeing the different colored pens and the massive amount of different ink samples I've got. It amuses them to write with all the different vibrant colors, and I get to eat up my samples collection slowly but surely LOL

[tragique]

Always two, generally one for EDC and one for use in more comfortable settings.

[ac12]

Too many.

Especially after a pen show, when I have new pens and ink to play with

As Sandy said, certain inks just take more effort to clean out, and you need to match those inks with pens which are easier to clean, the cartridge/converters.

 

As for pens, I have two Parker 51s which are LONG TERM PENS. This means, that the ink that I put in those pens will STAY in those pens for a LONG LONG time. This is simply because of the difficulty in really cleaning a 51 when doing an ink change. Similarly, if you have a difficult to clean pen, you may have to just not change inks very much with those pens.

[Dronak]

I think I have about 20 fountain pens, and for a while recently, they were all inked. However, I've put a few aside now, because they're just not great performers for the kind of writing and note-taking I normally do. I have a 12-pen case and would like to get to the point where I don't have any more than 12 pens inked up. I'll have to put away a few more pens to reach that point, and have a few in mind (mainly for being somewhat slow starters, in my experience), but should get there soon enough. If the amount of writing I do reduces over time, I'll probably try to reduce the number of inked pens I have because it will be harder to keep the ink flowing in a lot of them, but I'll worry about that when/if it happens.

[ThirdeYe]

I've gotten it down to 5 before, but I have 25 inked right now. Way too many! I went on an inking spree.

Edited September 4, 2015 by ThirdeYe

[bongo47]

I've been trying to change my ways and ink fewer. Right now, it's 4: twsbi Eco cause it's new and I'm still loving it, a hemisphere that fits better in my shirt pocket, a Lamy though I think that's superfluous cause it's been sitting without use since the Eco, and a cheapo Jinhao I stick in my short's or jeans pocket so I don't worry about losing a favorite (but it actually writes pretty well).

 

I've gone through and started flushing out all my others so none are sitting with dried up ink and are ready to be called up. Actually now that I think of it, my Waterman expert II is still inked too. It has a cartridge in it. Oops never mind, I just checked it and it's dried out. In to the to-be-flushed bag it went.

[bongo47]

Dang I also forgot about my Pilot VP which I always have hooked onto my notebook, I consider it my trustee backup, with a cartridge in, and a spare in the notebook.

[R. N. Dominick]

Right now I have 28 inked. This is down from 36 a month ago -- I think that's a record high. I just like having pens available to write with, to choose from when going out, and all of that. I keep sternly saying to myself I have to cut down, but really, there's no reason to, so I don't.

Edited September 4, 2015 by R. N. Dominick