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

March 22, 2018

Here's something to help with my maths:

Q: What's the difference between a duck?

A: One of its legs is both the same.

[i can't remember the source; possibly the Marx Brothers]

March 22, 2018

No worries, your math is just like that of my students. So, it's university level and that's why others might not get it.

March 22, 2018

Depends on what you want your ink to do.....if you want a clean line or shading....80g copy paper ...outside of Rhoda won't shade.

If you never really peer closely at what you wrote but think a fuzzy line/woolly line is 'normal'....works 'good enough'. It does.

I'm more than a bit OCD on feathering and or woolly lines......and sometimes it's the ink. Pelikan Edelstein Aventurine feathers.

For my taste many Diamine or Akkermann inks have a woolly line...some feather.

Avery Zweckform papers...had a good name....yet for fountain pens....120g laser was not near good enough. The 170g glossy is...clean line, shades...but feel like plastic.

Clairalfa.......a Clairefontaine 120 gram paper didn't make the cut either but I was stupid...it's Laser-inkjet.

You can cheap out in the wrong place....be shortsighted. Clairefontaine Triump is expensive paper....but a ream of 500 sheets should last you years........so I put that off for a long time.

Then some five or six years ago...Aldi had a back to school sale....and they had 90 g Hammered, Laid, marbled paper and...120 g Linen effect, for some 3 E a pack.....and I'd even bought some 80 g assorted colored paper....that was much better than ever expected.....not that I really need a red or blue paper.

I'd not expected much from marbled paper....what a pleasant surprise.

I suddenly had 4 different good papers and cheap enough. The next year I bought a few packs more....the next year....I'd decided to buy a lot and ship it to various good posters who'd :wallbash:There was no third year. I had a start...with labeled papers that said what they were.

Moral....buy lots more good harder to find cheap paper than you 'need' when you find it.....you have decades of paper use left in you.

I have G. Lalo 160g paper but no 90g....so I can't compare.

Same with Ve`l`in pur Coton 125G, 50% coton, I don't have in 90g.

I like those papers but they are not smooth and easy...they are 'laid' so rougher.

What do you want your paper to do?

What can you expect from your paper?

That is one of the many questions one must ask what one expects from a paper.

Linen Effect...in I don't even know if there is a linen paper today...but they fake it good.

They have two ways of doing that, by pressing paper to that or rolling it over a big drum.

Like knowing what a nib with some flex, like semi-flex that needs a matching paper and ink to do best, or a nice regular flex nib......there are papers that need a M and not an F.

Oh, yes, what paper one uses with what nib width....what flex...makes a big difference, to what sort of line one lays on that paper which will be so different with a smoother paper.

Like the nib and the ink, what do you want the paper to do......

Not all nibs must be 'butter smooth', not all inks must be vivid monotone supersaturated inks, nor must every paper need be 'common' printer paper or super smooth.

The more you know, the more chase's you can get from the paper...to match, a nib and an ink.

Some folks insist on using Moleskine.....so they have to use a EF or narrower nib with a fast drying ink....in it bleeds through with any fun nib or ink.

That is their problem.

The first think I wanted to do when I got back to fountain pens.....was get some of that 'famous' Moleskine.

However, I listened to the wisdom here on the com some decade ago, and never bought any....and I'd been going to in it's a Great Ball Point Paper ............with a 'Name'.....that was bought up and has nothing to do with the '50's paper of Hemingway....

""""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.""""

All paper use to be coated, now only the better ones are. Typewriter paper only on one side.

Best advice would be buy up vintage paper on Ebay.

I have to agree with gas-man... how heavy is your Hand?

That will make a difference to what nib you can use.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

March 23, 2018

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.

That obviously happens if you don't write quickly, and there's not much to do about it.

OP, however, was complaining about not enough flow, which struck me as really odd.