A Lesson I'm Slow To Learn. A Warning To Others.

[Lugworm]

In work I often use my Kaweco Sport on cheap photocopier paper. The pen does not like it. Unfortunately in my stupidity I been blaming the pen and go about "fixing" the nib in an attempt to increase ink flow. My techniques lack skill or finesse and are rather brutish and as a rule makes the nib worse than before.

I wish I had realised before fiddling with the nib that the type of paper you write on is just as important as your choice of pen and ink.

 

Hopefully my Kaweco will forgive my incompetence and will steadily become a smooth writer once again. I'm not holding out much hope.

[Uncial]

You can buy new nib units for a reasonable price if it doesn't. Straightening tines is easy enough done if that's all it is.

[French]

Thank you for sharing your tale of woe. One of the members her (I believe it is BoBoOlson) often says pen performance has 3 parts, ink, nib, paper. If this isn’t Mr. Olson’s quote, I ask the proper owner to please forgive my ignorance.

 

French

[ENewton]

I was disappointed with my Kaweco for years until I began to use it as an eyedropper and to use very wet inks in it.

 

Of course, paper makes a difference, but a pen with meager ink flow often works better on copy paper than on fancier, less absorbent paper.

[pw1224]

You can buy new nib units for a reasonable price if it doesn't. Straightening tines is easy enough done if that's all it is.

Definitely keep this in mind. The prices for additional Kaweco Sport steel nibs are so reasonable that I found them to be great for experimenting in nib sizes. (So far, I haven’t been too fond of Lamy Safari nibs. That’s just my $0.02.)

[pajaro]

I have several Lamy Safaris, and I found them all good for me. The EF nibs are dry and write a thin line, exactly what I wanted. This is not what everyone wants, though. If you want a freer flow, and you are using a dry nib, try a wetter ink.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Writing is 1/3 nib width/flex, 1/3 paper and 1/3 ink and in that order.

 

#1.....ink jet paper will feather in it is designed to soak up ink rapidly from the ink jets....and fountain pens are slower with ink delivery and more of it............so don't use ink jet paper.

Combo laser and ink jet paper will have compromises....though I am satisfied with the 'better' Southworth papers I picked up in the States that are combo.

 

There are a lot of good English papers like Conqueror.....but which one?

You will have to go to one of the two paper subsections.

 

For cheap 80 copy paper you need a dry ink....like a Pelikan...and in you live in Wales where it is legal, Pelikan 4001 Blue Black is a good ink....(Not legal in the US...they used wimpy US rats in in the test instead of the Standard tough Norway Rats which is standard in Europe.)

One of the world's best inks.

It will shade on your at home scribble for the fun of it 90G ( & or +) laser paper. Yes, it costs twice as much as cheaper 80 copy paper..................but who says you got to waste it in a copier?

 

Do get your self some British Oxford Optic 90g paper....a good inexpensive paper that shades well....I have a notebook a nice poster sent me from England....it's within one ink = to Clairefontaine Veloute` 90g.

I have both in spiral notebooks, and Oxford Optic 90g is the paper in the Red&Black notebook.

Rhoda and Clairefontaine Triumph are slicker papers.

 

I did it all wrong...first I got a slew of pens, then I started getting inks.....and then finally papers.

 

I suggest for every 2-3 inks, one buys a good to better paper. It need not be a full ream....there is possibilities of buying a half ream or even 100 sheet boxes.

 

Good paper compared to normal 80g copy paper, costs two mechanically delivered cans of Coke more.....better paper costs a couple cups of Starbucks coffee and brownies.

For a couple of beers less a week, you can save up for some of the real good stuff in only half a year.

 

 

Do you need the following....no....not until you have an assortment of nib widths and flexes and a number of shading inks, inks with sheen....which I'm still working on, and even some supersaturated inks.

I do prefer two tone shading inks over vivid monotone supersaturated inks.

 

Once in a while I got lucky....and could buy A Single Sheet of good paper for 50 cents to 1 Euro.....One was so sinfully good to write on, it would be made illegal to use on Sunday in Kansas........ :crybaby:it feathered big time.

 

After dilettantely chasing paper, I ordered a sample pack with some Gmund's fountain pen friendly papers. (2 were free the others cost E0.80....someone had to single sheet that, so there was labor cost.) Some 12 sheets of three or four types at 100g-110-120150-170g....spent two years scribbling with lots various inks.....dithering big time at the cost of E40 for 100 sheets.

 

Gmund 'Blanc Beige' (the name of the paper not it's color) in creme at 170g the second best got the button pushed....in I like the feel of heavy paper. The best was the 120g ....which I will get as soon as I learn to save money.

I found Gmund 'Blanc Beige' to be better than the more expensive Gmund Original.

Never get Art Paper from a paper company which makes superior papers....those are not good for fountain pens.

 

Paper may be the most complicated part of fountain pens.........but there is no hurry, one has the time to study.........to ponder............to crib answers from folks with half as many papers as they have inks.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[senzen]

It took me a while to learn this too, there are many parameters, including our own patience and expectations.

[Innosint]

To me, a pen's writing performance is

Pen body + Nib >= Paper >=ink.

The pen dictates the balance and weight in hand.

The nib dictates the general tactile feed back while writing.

The paper dictates how the ink will behave in macro scale.

The paper also dictates the amount of tactile feed back we receive on macro level.

The ink dictates how it will behave on paper on a more micro scale.

(except for special property like water proof)

The ink also dictates the amount of tactile feedback received on micro level.

 

I seriously recommend anyone who starts on this hobby to allocate some fund on to try out different paper.
there are lots of fountain friendly paper out there and they each have their own niche..
I wish fountain pen companies can provide paper sample package so user can see what works for them.
but that may take a lot of work.

[Otter1]

As to paper samplers, Goulet has a notebook sampler package set that I keep looking at.

16 bucks gets you a small notebook from Apica, Clairefontaine, Mauruman Mnemosyne, Midori MD, Rhodia, and Rhodia premium.

 

Not much of a discount over buying them individually, but might be a nice pre-selected group to experiment with.

 

I have several pounds of notebooks that will never see a fountain pen because the paper just isn't what I want.

 

-Otter1

[Corona688]

In work I often use my Kaweco Sport on cheap photocopier paper. The pen does not like it. Unfortunately in my stupidity I been blaming the pen and go about "fixing" the nib in an attempt to increase ink flow.

Poor flow isn't something I'd blame on photocopy paper. It might bleed, but my pens always seem to write regardless. Edited March 21, 2018 by Corona688

[Filot Palcon]

Paper choice is very important for nearly any kind of non. I find that some of my Japanese XF mins can handle mostly anything though, but may feel a bit rougher on bad paper.

[DrDebG]

+1 on what BoBoOlsen said above. Paper quality is a big deal.

 

For me, I use a variety of papers - sometimes I have no control over the kind of paper used (such as when I have to markup a copy sent to me by a client).

 

I keep a list (or spreadsheet), of pen/ink/paper combinations. I try to keep it simple, but it isn't always that easy.

 

Sometimes, I just don't know what I will be writing on. I recently had to sign a number of documents. For that I almost always use my Franklin Christoph FP with medium italic nib (not especially wet or dry pen) and Pilot Iroshizuku Take-sumi - generally a fairly safe combination for most paper. Well, the governmental office that produced the documents used the cheapest copy paper they could find. When I did a small scribble in the corner, the ink bled badly. I ended up having to sign the documents in a ball point pen.

[Joe in Seattle]

Some papers will release small particles of paper which can accumulate in the nib area.

[corgicoupe]

"Writing is 1/3 nib width/flex, 1/3 paper and 1/3 ink and in that order."

 

If each is 1/3 of the importance, what difference does it make what order they are taken in?

[Bo Bo Olson]

Paper is the waxed floor danced on, ink the tango, nib width/flex the dancers.

Can't have the dancers stumbling around because the floor is rough and sticky.

 

Just because each is 1/3 don't mean each third is equally weighted.

A good paper will make a mediocre ink look good....no good ink looks good on poor paper.

....not if you have a big honking magnifying glass and are looking for feathering/woolly lines.

 

There is huge differences between width of a nib for how much ink it lays....how much more in a regular flex or a semi-flex lays than a nail.

 

90g laser paper will allow shading....80g copy paper not....outside of Rhoda and that 70 g Japanese Tomolo or how ever paper.

(I have some wonderful vintage 16 lb/50g... Eaton's Corrasable 25% rag typewriter paper...being typewriter paper means it's only coated on the front.....wonderful paper........on the front...........but boy does it bleed through.)

 

I find 100% and 50% cotton to be nice to write on...often very very nice, but...they feather/wooly line more than 25%.

 

My best paper now down from 12 sheets to 8....was discovered in some old very good 80g bond paper that was too good for a '70/80''s Jukie daisy wheel printer. It was a cheap paper pad....I bought when I was a ball point barbarian and wouldn't have dreamed of spending beer money on paper.

 

It's such a shame there is no watermark....so I can never chase down who made that paper. Back then they still coated cheap paper and on both sides.

The coating makes such a difference. Rhoda's 80g paper is coated so it's good, where regular copy paper is not coated....and is better for ball points than fountain pens.

 

Paper is a control....to how much ink is absorbed and how fast.....some inks feather or have woolly lines on poorer papers where that problem don't exist on slick paper. Some paper allows the tango, others .... are a ruin to a fair to good ink....even the best inks can't strut their stuff on PP paper.

 

How can one tell it's a best ink...if one don't have a good to better paper to show it off on.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[OMASsimo]

When I started using fountain pens a few decades ago, whatever pen with whatever ink on whichever paper used to work just fine. Pens might have changed but I use pens form the 1920s to current, so pens from my childhood era should work just fine. Inks didn't change too much in formula either, at least I think so. Yet, I'm often disappointed with a pen/ink/paper combination. I blame this on the paper mostly. Many modern papers are poorly bonded and thus not fountain pen friendly. I have the direct comparison because I'm clearing out my old parent's house and grab whatever writing paper I can find. Cheap no-name notepads from the 60s/70s (even 80s) perform flawlessly with ink, very unlike many current notepads. So, I'm pretty sure that's the paper which causes most of the problems.

 

The typical issue with current papers is that they are too absorbent because of poor finish and bonding. This is not a problem for ball pens but leads to feathering and bleed through with ink. However, what you describe does not fit into this pattern. If a pen writes too dry on poor paper it's usually a problem of the pen/ink combination.

 

By the way, some pens seem to write fine on just everthing. My best all purpose writers of this kind seem to be Pelikans from the 50s and 60s.

[Corona688]

This just sounds so odd. I've never had problems using fountain pens with copy paper. Or el-cheapo ruled notebooks. Or sticky-notes. That's why I started using them at all. All the papers a bic hates, work.

 

I feel there must be something in common here. What exact problems are you having? What pens, nibs, inks? Let's tally them up and look for something in common, maybe then we'll figure out why.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Corona688

[OMASsimo]

Lucky you, then. And what I described is not a new or unknown issue, many fp users experience the same. It's not that my pens wouldn't write on such paper, they all do without effort. But very often it results in bleed through or strong feathering, both well-known and much discussed issues. It would be a bit lengthy to list a three-digit number of my pens here but the summary of my collection is 20% 1920-40s, 50% 1950-60s, 30% 1970-current; 95% gold nibs, 5% steel nibs; focus of collection is Osmia, Kaweco, Pelikan, OMAS plus other high quality pens like Montblanc, S. T. Dupont, Caran d'Ache, Sheaffer, Aurora, Anchora, Delta, Stipula, Wahl-Eversharp, Parker, Mabie Todd Swan, Stewart Conway, Burnham and so on. I think you get the picture. Favourite inks are Pelikan, Waterman, Diamine, OMAS (gone unfortuantely). And to be not mistaken, pretty much all my pens write fantastic on good paper.

 

I'd be happy if you could come up with an explanation. I simply blame it on the poor paper. Maybe your cheap paper is better than the stuff we get here usually. And as I mentioned above, I have no issues with cheap vintage notepads at all because they were well bonded since fp use was still widespread practice unlike nowadays.

[the_gasman]

Writing is 1/3 nib width/flex, 1/3 paper and 1/3 ink and in that order.

 

I use a similar formula:

 

Writing is 1/3 nib width/flex, 1/3 paper, 1/3 ink, 1/3 the-idiot-that-wields-the-pen — the latter is the most important because he/she chooses the other three thirds!

 

Cheers,

David.