How Do You Rotate Your Pens ?

[Rafael Macia]

Do you use one for a certain time period? empty it, then use another?

or do you keep a selection 3-5 pens, for example, filled, and vary them day to day?

 

With regard to inks;

Do certain pens in your rotation, use certain inks, and others, other inks?

 

just general questions,

appreciate any insight into any methods anyone may have.

 

thanks

Rafael

 

[jar]

Whichever pen happens to strike my fancy. No method to my madness.

[Wandering Man]

I guess I'll confess to my OCD:

 

I keep 4 pens in rotation; a cheap pen; a modern, pricier pen, a vintage pen, and a desk pen. They're pretty much rotated in order of when I got them.

 

Inks usually match the color of the pen.

[hh1990]

My Lamy is pretty much always inked up, as I use it for work. I don't have too much of a selection to choose from, but tend to rotate through my pens as they run out of ink.

[pajaro]

Willy nilly, in a circle.

[PAKMAN]

I have 2-3 inked up, as each one becomes empty then I clean it out and ink up something else.

[LizEF]

Once I fill it, I use it up. I try to limit myself to no more than 3 pens at a time. The pens and ink are chosen strictly by what I'm in the mood for when I ink them. However, I recently acquired a Pilot Penmanship, and I may keep this inked all the time because it's so useful to have a really fine nib available.

 

I "rotate" them based on use rather than schedule / location. For example, that Penmanship usually goes to work with me, where I might need to write on lousy paper. If I'm in the mood, I'll take another pen to work for meeting notes. I wrote a thank-you card this morning with the pen that had the cheeriest ink in it (color looked good with the card colors). I'll write a letter with the ink that looks best on the selected stationery. If there's no other reason, I'll select the pen based on what I'm in the mood for.

[ehemem]

Counterclockwise, along the long axis. As for inks, I'm very conservative, once I fill a pen with an ink, that is the ink that'll be in that pen for a long, long time...

[Buzz_130]

I have about 10 pens inked right now, and I've settled on this as a reasonable number for me to use and manage. When one pen runs dry, the pen gets cleaned and stored. The next pen in the line comes out of storage and gets filled with ink and stays in rotation until it runs dry. Repeat.

 

Buzz

[gregamckinney]

I have a very unscientific method.

1) I try not to have too many pens in rotation at once ("not too many" is a totally variable quantity)

2) when I want to ink up another pen I do

3) once I've inked up a pen, I get around, in the next day or so, to flushing one of the pens that had been in rotation

 

 

Best Regards, greg

[praxim]

I have some number in rotation that I thought would be three to four and proves to be five to seven.

 

I usually mark on my "inks and pens" database which pens are next in priority, and which inks. These are then matched up and something comes in when something goes out, or sooner.

 

The basis for next pen gives priority to newly arrived pens and to those longer out of use with a look also at what pen styles are in use -- fill the gaps and not too many of one brand or appearance -- and what nib characteristics.

[sirgilbert357]

I have 8 pens and 8 inks. They all stay inked and, for the most part, the inks are dedicated to a specific pen, except for one. The Pilot 78g is a "floater" of sorts. I have two black inks, and don't usually have both in rotation at the same time since I use so little black. So, the 78g gets whatever ink I feel like or is used for samples. It's easy to clean and is consistent, so I can readily discern the qualities of an ink sample by using the 78g to test it out. At this point, I feel there is a sort of equilibrium so I am trying to convince myself that I don't need any more pens...we'll see how that goes!

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I have a small group of pens, at least one of which, usually two or three, will probably be inked at any given time. Other than that, some pens are more likely to be used than others, but there's no system, just the thought that "I haven't used that one in a while, why not now?" Between three and six pens inked at once would be typical, right now it's five. Always at least one.

[sharonspens]

At the beginning of the calendar year, one pen and one ink are identified as the pair I will use continuously for the year. The rest f the pens and inks are rotated, usually vacillating from 4-5 vintage to an equal number of modern pens. As I empty one out I pull on something else.

 

Sharon in Indiana

[catbert]

Counterclockwise, along the long axis.

 

 

I see what you did there.

[Wandering Man]

I see what you did there.

I hope he's in the minority. If too many of us rotate our pens counter clockwise at the same time we might risk a warp in the time-space continuum!

[ppdiaporama]

I have three pens in my rotation and two permanent.

 

Rotation;

There is always some sort of order to the rotation. Typically, it's one pen that I really love and two others that I'm trying to love ;-) I try to keep a variety of nibs inked; stub, medium and either a fine or a broad. Similarly, I try to vary the inks ... not all blues, maybe one blue and two something else.

 

As for the permanent pens .. on is a Sheaffer desk pen that sites on my office desk as a functional decoration and the other is a Platinum Preppy that I leave in my RV so that I don't carry my pens out to the country every week.

[Erik Dalton]

Which pens come up for inking is a function of my fancy at the time. A lot of times I'll be writing with a pen and really like the way it writes. This sets off a kind of competition in my head to see which other pens write as good or better than the original. It's not hard to get 6-10 pens inked up pretty quick. Then there are always new finds arriving. They have to be inked, tested, nibs tuned. So pretty soon the number of pens has risen higher....I mean empty, and waste ink in a pen that has just been tested, cleaned and now writing like a champ? Then there is the pen coming off the repair bench, and needs testing. The orderly rotation is now trashed.

Recently in a determined effort to exercise control, started with 3 sailor pens, then some new ones arrived, so I had to break out some others to grade how the new ones performed relative to the pens I have already tuned. Now, I have 7 sailor pens inked plus my always inked up MB146, & 149.

I keep pen and ink journals so I can see how each pen writes and any work done on it. Same for ink samples. I also keep a section called "My Pens". This lists all the pens that are inked up and the ink used.

If you get as bad as me, there is no longer any hope, and your wallet is usually empty...lol

 

4 weeks max, then they all get cleaned, and put up.

[BMG]

Counterclockwise, along the long axis....

 

Ok, you beat me to it (though I was going to say "clockwise" -- honest, I was!!! ).

[BMG]

I suppose I should add something more substantive...

 

I generally have only 2 or 3 max. pens inked up at any one time, the reason being that I actually want to write with the 2–3 of them. If I had more inked up, I undoubtedly would never see the end of the ink in any of them, the reason being...

 

I favor EF to EEF nibs, so a piston- or even converter-full of ink goes a long, long way. Plus, since I'm only using two pens, I finish the ink faster and can switch to two other pens if I so desire (and I generally do).

 

Allow me to add that I try to have two different nib widths / styles at any given time: EEF + F or EFCI or OF or some combination thereof.

Edited October 18, 2016 by BMG