Things I Hate About A Thing I Love

[Houston]

The internet, it is said, loves lists. Gossips like confessions. Here’s both.

 

I’ve been using fountain pens since being called precocious -- not, I think, as a compliment -- in the late 70s, when non-ballpoint behaviour attracted the comment of schoolteachers. I’ve been collecting fountain pens, after a fashion, since I could afford more than one. Like many on FPN, I have too many pens and too many inks, judged by any rational standard not hatched from the mind of a fellow fetishist. In short, this is a life-long love.

 

I write with my pens every day. I use them for grocery lists and for love letters. I delight when a distinctive pen comes up in my rotation; excitement accompanies inking-up. I even enjoy the agonising arguments between indulgence and self-control when confronting whether to buy another pen, a new colour of ink. I adore this stuff.

 

Yet, like all great loves, this one is not born of perfection. Adoration countenances flaws as surely as idealises idols. There are aspects of this affliction which are more akin to burdens borne than pleasures indulged.

 

Here is my confession of the things that drive me ‘round the twist about this fountain pen life -- things that bore me to tears, frustrate my bits off, or just make me sigh and loudly roll my eyes. Some of these sins are unique to the tine-bound, and might be thrown in our faces by ball-pen users flaunting the superiority of low maintenance. Others may not be the particular province of the ink-stained, but seem nevertheless needless in an otherwise sophisticated world of tender technological blessings.

 

Wholesale caveat: These are my biases and peeves. My individual experience is idiosyncratic and makes no claim to universal truth. Your mileage, as the saying goes, may, indubitably and in every other way, vary.

 

Things I hate about a thing I love:

 

Poor Quality Control: Whether at the high end or the low end of the price range, we’ve all experienced pens with flaws that should never have passed inspection. We tolerate a failure rate that should be embarrassing to an industry making a relatively simple product that has been conceptually stable for a century. Whether originating in design or manufacture, these flaws are avoidable. At the high-priced end of the market, they are unconscionable. (A premium pen brand that has a years-long reputation for baby bottom? Really?) There are some manufacturers that have very low tolerance for error, and their reputations among the cognoscenti benefit, accordingly. But, as a category, fountain pens fail to meet reasonable expectations of quality control far more often than they should.

 

Out-of-the-box failure to write: To some, this is just a sub-set of the point above -- a manifestation of poor quality control. Yet, even conceding that point, this strikes me as worthy of its own place in any pantheon of fountain pen sins. How many of us have had our excitement, upon the arrival of a new pen, crushed by the experience of the first strokes, words and sentences? How many folks new to fountain pens have cursed the d****d things after a first-time failure to write, never to return? There is no good reason a new pen should struggle to set down a satisfying line.

 

Manufacturing residues and surface tension: Every time I receive a new pen, I flush the whole thing before inking it up. The constitution of my flushing solution has evolved over the years, but not the practice. If it’s a cartridge/converter pen, I flush it twice, and then do the converter a third time for good measure. It’s almost like a physical incantation against the evil spirits of manufacturing residues, a prostration to ward off potential flow problems that will only emerge once the nib makes the unreasonable demand that ink flow from the reservoir. Is it unreasonable to imagine that manufacturers might ship their product with this problem already resolved? ...rather than putting all but the most jaded veterans in the position of wondering why their pen stopped writing when there’s still ink in the converter.

 

The requirement that we be fiddlers: Don’t get me wrong, I like tuning my nibs. I like aligning tines, and I like knowing my way around micromesh and brass shim-stock. There is satisfaction and even pride in a well-hacked feed. But we all look back with derision at a time when car ownership required thorough mechanical knowledge. One can now own and enjoy motoring without knowing the first thing about motors -- and that is an *advance*. (If it’s still called technology, it ain’t working right yet.) One should be able to enjoy fountain pens -- consistently -- without having to resort to tinkering. These things should just work. (Am I still harping about QC? Ok. Sort of.)

 

Cleaning pens: Sure, there’s a therapeutic element of “chop wood, carry water” to my monthly ritual of cleaning pens. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a PITA. I have sympathy with folks who think life’s too short for writing implements that require continual cleaning.

 

Ink drying out in a pen: We’ve all done it. It sucks. The user is entirely at fault, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a thing that afflicts us. Crusty pens suck.

 

Lack of standards: As I wrote in a recent post about Cursive Italics vs Stubs, I’m a person who likes known knowns. So, within reason, I like standards, rules. I’m an empiricist with an unholy admiration for precision that asymptotically borders on certainty. So, in this world, I occasionally have to run to the liquor cabinet when confronted with discussions of just how broad is broad, or the degree to which a description of nib size must be interpreted through the lens of national origin. I’m at peace with the messy alchemy of nib+ink+paper+ambient humidity+godknowswhat, but there are aspects of fountain pens (and ink and paper) that are engineered, and would be far easier to make sense of -- for pros and noobs, alike -- if they were quantified and standardised. Resistance to doing so makes embrace of fountain pens a frustration for many, and expertise the province of a few. (My bias is for the democratization of knowledge, rather than supplication before wizards of arcane arts -- much as I might admire the wizards, themselves.)

 

Poor customer service: In the fountain pen world, few manufacturers provide a high standard of customer service. Some are legendarily bad -- or at least legendarily inconsistent, which is just another version of bad. This only serves to exacerbate the points about poor QC, above. From the litany of failed fountain pen manufacturers, it is clear that this is a business in which it can be hard to make a profit. And customer service is always a cost centre. But there are enough -- few, but enough -- examples of folks that *do* get it right, that it’s clearly do-able. Given that we’re in a niche market, one would have thought that retaining customers would have been a cost worth incurring, and factoring into the business plan.

 

An unnecessarily large amount of marketing BS: Precious resin. Fusion nib. I could go on. We all could. It’s not piled higher than in many other consumer goods sectors, but it annoys me. And I’m a marketer.

 

Mysteries that disadvantage customers: To be sure, there is nothing improper about proprietary information. Trade secrets are wonderful things...for the trade. That doesn’t keep me from being occasionally irked by the absence of information -- and sometimes the outright refusal to provide it -- that would benefit customers. As an informed consumer, I don’t like secrecy as a strategy. It is certainly a manufacturer’s right not to tell the marketplace when they switch from Jowo to Bock, but that doesn’t prevent me from resenting the decision. It is entirely Akkerman’s prerogative to refuse acknowledgement of which inks are merely re-bottled Diamine stock colours. No one should be surprised when Leuchtturm won’t disclose what paper stock they use, nor offer said stock for sale, even at a premium. It is violating no law when manufacturers decline to make available thorough servicing instructions enabling easy disassembly and reassembly. But I find myself a more loyal customer -- even a “brand champion”, in the parlance -- when companies are as energetic in providing information about their products as they are in encouraging me to buy them. I own *more* TWSBI products because of their transparency (see what I did there?), not fewer.

 

So. There.

 

Now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest, let me celebrate.

 

The antidote to most of what I’ve lambasted, above, is this wonderful community -- by which I mean FPN, specifically, but also the broader community of knowledgeable, generous folks who offer their experience and insight in response to even the most naive or trivial queries. (And, where FPN, specifically, is concerned, we are all indebted to the mods for making this such a thriving, constructive place.)

 

Because of this community, I have been able to resolve all but a few of the unnecessary mysteries of pens, inks, paper, and the enjoyment of them all. So, sincere gratitude. Thank you.

--Houston

Edited March 3, 2019 by Houston

[Carrau]

Well put-now if we could get Toyota to manufacture the pens and have LLBean run customer service......

[Bo Bo Olson]

 

 

 

Poor Quality Control: Send it back to the maker with a note.....what is wrong....correct it!

 

 

Out-of-the-box failure to write: Buy only in B&M's having tested the nib....mail is full of robot field goal kickers. IMO anything shipped in the mail not by Gulote(sp) the kick it off the top of the Mountain or dorp out of an airplane package, is not in a mail proof box but in a display box. Mail is rough on goods.

 

Manufacturing residues and surface tension: Until I got here never heard of that back in the day.....was there....but that was sac pens of one type or another. a year or so later, shoved the cartridge in it and bent it like crazy to make it write.

Didn't have converters so surface tension didn't matter.......converters with tiny springs are best.

 

The requirement that we be fiddlers: .....Buy vintage pens.....the max one 'must[' do is run it over a brown paper bag to get rid of drag of generations of sitting in the dark of the drawer.

 

Cleaning pens: We didn't know about that in the old days, which is why many pens ended up in the dark of the drawer. If one stays with one ink, then a pen needs to be cleaned by my '50's MB&Pelikan directions once every 3 months.

If you change inks, yep could help if you want one color only and not a dirty first load....or a dirty color every time one changes ink color.

 

""" life’s too short for writing implements that require continual cleaning. """ They perhaps have other problems beyond fountain pens....this yank a piston pen apart to clean up ghost ink.

 

Ink drying out in a pen: I have too many pens inked.

 

Lack of standards: You can have all your pens ground to your very own standards.

History of why every company has it's own standards......It all started back in the One Man, One Pen days..........Parker made a wider nib than Sheaffer ....ancient market survey....at pen shops.....where one was asked do you want a wide or a skinny nib. If a wide one, was shown Parker pens, if a thin one was shown Sheaffer pens. The brand's customer.....Ford vs Chevy. Parker could have made a thinner nib the width of a Sheaffer nib.....but that could lead to a catastrophe.......the One Man, who bought a new pen every 7-10 years could have bought a Sheaffer instead of a Parker.....and getting the man back as a customer in 7-10 years would be hard because of brand loyalty.

 

Then you have different eras..........vintage and semi-vintage Pelikans are 1/2 a width narrower than modern....outside the 200/100-150) Once Pelikan was narrower than both Parker and Sheaffer.

 

Tolerance/slop....A skinny M can = a fat F...............and would be even if in the middle of tolerance from another company, A skinny M it's F....or the Fat F could be their M in middle of tolerance....

And do not believe any BS about the number nibs being any closer to tolerance. a 1.0 can just as well be a 1.1 or a 0.9 and be a 1.0............even today with Lamy's robot nib machine, there is tolerance in both letter and numbered nibs.

There is no exact....very wide, broad, middle broad, middle, middle thin, thin, real thin....spiderewebs....................if any nib you have is with in 1/2 a width of what it is marked...(take your pick to which is miss marked the Japanese or the Western. and if you complain afterwards about fat western nibs....then don't buy any! Period, you know better.)

 

 

Ron Zorn tolerance...taken at the Sheaffer factory in the US just as it closed down.

 

Sheaffer used a dial indicator nib gauge for measuring nib sizes. The nib was inserted into the gauge, and the size read off of the dial. A given size being nibs that fell within a given range. What is listed below were the ranges given on a gauge that I saw in the Sheaffer service center prior to being closed in March 2008.

 

Measurements are in thousandths of an inch.

 

XXF = 0.010 - 0.013

XF = 0.013 - 0.018

F = 0.018 - 0.025

M = 0.025 - 0.031

Broad* = 0.031 - 0.050

Stub = 0.038 - 0.050

 

*there was some overlap on the gauge. May be 0.035 - 0.050.

 

Close enough for government work, goes for Everyone's nibs.

 

Poor customer service: Pelikan use to be free if shipped to Germany....understand it has changed.....Lamy is still free...............MB is just depending on what is to be done that a nibmeister/repairman can match that price.

Visconti.....is infamous.

Cross is still great. But what the hell can really go wrong with a CC pen.

 

An unnecessarily large amount of marketing BS: Precious resin. Fusion nib. I could go on. We all could. It’s not piled higher than in many other consumer goods sectors, but it annoys me. And I’m a marketer.

 

Mysteries that disadvantage customers: To be sure, there is nothing improper about proprietary information. Trade secrets are wonderful things...for the trade. That doesn’t keep me from being occasionally irked by the absence of information -- and sometimes the outright refusal to provide it -- that would benefit customers. As an informed consumer, I don’t like secrecy as a strategy. It is certainly a manufacturer’s right not to tell the marketplace when they switch from Jowo to Bock, but that doesn’t prevent me from resenting the decision.

It is entirely Akkerman’s prerogative to refuse acknowledgement of which inks are merely re-bottled Diamine stock colours. It's my understanding that although Diamine makes the inks, there is slight differences between colors........

 

No one should be surprised when Leuchtturm won’t disclose what paper stock they use, nor offer said stock for sale, even at a premium.

Have no idea what paper is used.....but there were enough dissatisfied that Leuchtturm is not on my list to buy....unless I have a choice of Leuschtturm and Moleskine (a great ball point paper)............actually wouldn't use either. Oxford Optic 90g or Clairefontaine Velout`90g spiral notebooks are good inexpensive paper. Red and Black Notebook(Black and Red???) uses Oxford Optic 90g, a superior paper; most users of both Red & Black and Leuschtturm say .

 

 

Don't have modern notebooks, when my work supplied me them, I was still a ball point barbarian so it didn't matter.

 

Well put-now if we could get Toyota to manufacture the pens and have LLBean run customer service......

 

After 8-10 years the zipper of a pair of corduroy pants from LL Bean broke. Living in Germany I asked for a new zipper, in shipping the pants to and from the US was too expensive. They sent me two zippers and said send them the tailoring bill.

Edited March 4, 2019 by Bo Bo Olson

[Tseg]

I hate when I have a nib that in the process of toying around with it or tweaking it it ends up writing even better than I could have ever dreamed, only to see a slight ripple in the metal in the tineswhen viewed at a certain angle from a back-and-forth manipulation gone too far... so I have the perfect nib that is not perfect. I’ve got a couple of those.

[Tseg]

Well put-now if we could get Toyota to manufacture the pens and have LLBean run customer service......

Ha! Then we would end up with a Bic pen!

[Noihvo]

 

[Charles Skinner]

My, my MY! Wow! Lighten up! Nothing is perfect, except me, of course. Seems that you let little problems cause you sadness and alarm, and likely causes you to miss the "joys of real fountain pen use."

 

I must confess that I did not read every word of your rant. I needed to pick up one of my less than perfect pens and write in my less than perfect grammar about how much I love my wife! ---- I love her not because she is perfect. The fountain pen world would be much less interesting if every pen wrote perfectly right out of the box! ----- How would we be able to deal with marriage if EVERY wife in the world was PERFECT!

 

If you buy a pen that is "perfect," fine! Rejoice! If you buy one that is not exactly "right," enjoy making it right.

 

Smile! I will write about three pages today in my journal with my likely less that perfect pens! And I will enjoy every minute of it!

 

"Be for real," and "Write on!"

 

C. Skinner (a poor earthen vessel)

[Restored]

I tend to buy cheap because:
1. I'm in a partnership and I don't buy things. WE buy things. So I have to be careful where I spend my money.

2. It's a pen. I can't justify much money in that direction.

3. I buy cheaply enough that QC isn't much of an issue because I'm not sure it exists anymore.

4. I like expensive things but I want other people to have them. Seeing people happy makes me happy (middle child)

[TheDutchGuy]

Fountain pens are controlled ink leak, using a pointy piece of metal that we move across a thin sheet of extremely fragile material made from wood pulp, using our fingers the sensory nerves in which are exquisitely sensitive. To top it off, we require not just functionaly (i.e. it writes) but pleasure, uniqueness ("mine's really special!"), spectacular aesthetics and everlasting durability.

 

To summarize, it's a recipe for disappointment. So why do I like it so much?

[ENewton]

Nice title for the thread.

 

I have been very lucky, in my nearly 25 years of fountain-pen use. Only two pens have had disappointing--not defective--nibs, and one had a painted metal finish that began to look pocked within a few weeks. (Interestingly, the pocked pen was one of the two with the disappointing nibs.) The adaptation required to make a pen a pleasant writer has been almost exclusively a matter for finding the right ink for the pen.

 

That most of my pens were manufactured in the twentieth, not the twenty-first, century is probably a factor in my good fortune. And that my vintage pens are all from dealers with whom I've spoken in person.

 

I also don't mind flushing a pen when it is empty. In fact, I confess that I experience a little thrill when I realize a pen is about to be empty and that, that very evening, I can flush it and choose a different pen to fill.

[inkstainedruth]

This has been a really fascinating thread to read. And I think everyone, even when in disagreement over some issues, had valid points.

Oh, and good to know about LL Bean's customer service, since my winter coat is made by them.... (Mind you, I didn't buy it directly from them, but at the local mall's Sears store -- which has since closed and they're talking about renovating the frmer Sears space into a movie theatre and second food court....)

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[senzen]

Interesting, the title also sums my feelings quite well; this made me think of the road each of us takes and how it changes our expectations; I started with a few decent fountain pens but had no patience for those that refused to start, so I managed to do the typical newbie mistakes and mangled a couple of nibs along the way... Eventually I persevered, but there are still many random parameters, as listed here. Still, it's not all negative, in a way my cheaper pens made me appreciate those older, better pens, as I've come to appreciate how none of my four Muji pens ever fail, or how amazingly smooth a medium nib Metropolitan can feel with the right ink (Kon Peki), or how smooth my Lamy Vistas feel even on cheap copy paper, while more expensive pens are merely "ok".

 

With other less positive aspects I just sigh and move on, my latest peeve is how Lie de Thé doesn't get along with just any pen. After a very long time I finally managed to tame those pens I originally had problems with, after replacing the nibs and treating them with a lot of care (stored in individual pouches, strictly horizontally), my two Parker Sonnets are finally a joy to write with, I suspect their respective inks are helping a lot (Inti, Perle Noire), even if this leaves me with a bad aftertaste of superstition.

[A Smug Dill]

Wholesale caveat: These are my biases and peeves. My individual experience is idiosyncratic and makes no claim to universal truth. Your mileage, as the saying goes, may, indubitably and in every other way, vary.

 

Things I hate about a thing I love:

 

Poor Quality Control: Whether at the high end or the low end of the price range, we’ve all experienced pens with flaws that should never have passed inspection. We tolerate a failure rate that should be embarrassing to an industry making a relatively simple product that has been conceptually stable for a century.

We tolerate it in toothpicks, matchsticks, steak knives, axes, postal services, printed reading material, and news publishing. None of that is new. Sometimes a toothpick (inside a pack or tube) arrives bent or broken. Sometimes matchsticks aren't correctly cut from the sheet in the matchbook to the right width or with parallel edges, and sometimes they just don't ignite properly when struck or burn at the expected rate. Sometimes steak knives aren't as sharp as they should be out of the box; and an axe may be less 'perfectly balanced' than the next in the same bunch of axes a retailer has in stock.

 

So, do you hate it that we as consumers tolerate it, or that manufacturers aren't delivering 'Six Sigma' quality? I have never actually encountered a commercial supplier of products and services that delivered 'Six Sigma' quality (3.4 defects per million opportunities), including some large billion-dollar corporations for which I've worked.

 

Whether originating in design or manufacture, these flaws are avoidable.

Firstly, I don't think they're all avoidable. Designs include compromises (which are sometimes purely commercial or business decisions, and sometimes technical) that the individual prospective purchaser or user of a product may or may not agree. Physical materials themselves are subject to incidence of defects; catching a defective product, before it goes out the door to the customer, as part of the QC process does not eliminate the fault in 'manufacture'.

 

At the high-priced end of the market, they are unconscionable. (A premium pen brand that has a years-long reputation for baby bottom? Really?)

I disagree. Even Mercedes Benz, Lexus and Lotus vehicles can have defects coming off the production line or after going through retail detailing. As do Apple technology products and Google online services. Refusing to accept responsibility to rectifying defects in a unit that a customer paid for and received would be unconscionable, but simply 'failing' to avoid those manufacturing defects isn't.

 

Out-of-the-box failure to write: To some, this is just a sub-set of the point above -- a manifestation of poor quality control. Yet, even conceding that point, this strikes me as worthy of its own place in any pantheon of fountain pen sins. How many of us have had our excitement, upon the arrival of a new pen, crushed by the experience of the first strokes, words and sentences?

There's a difference between not writing at all even when the pen is filled for the first time ('out of the box') in accordance with the manufacturer's standard instructions, and just not writing the way we expect the pen to. Now that I'm venturing more into Italian pens (away from a solid base of Japanese pens that often arrive factory-sealed in plastic sleeves), I've encountered many of them that has remnants of blue ink in the nib when I flush it, as is my habit with new pens. That tells me that the pen has been 'tested' from the perspective of whether it writes, although it doesn't mean the tester have written with it (even just dipped lightly in ink) with strokes in every direction and/or in different calligraphic hands or languages, or that there is no gap between the nipple at the top of the feed and the mouth of the converter that could cause problems.

 

How many folks new to fountain pens have cursed the d****d things after a first-time failure to write, never to return? There is no good reason a new pen should struggle to set down a satisfying line.

See, the very use of the word 'satisfying' worries me, because that is inherently subjective, but no tester at the factory of a product that will be sold to some yet-unknown purchaser can know what 'satisfies' that individual purchaser.

 

Manufacturing residues and surface tension: Every time I receive a new pen, I flush the whole thing before inking it up.

As is my personal practice.

 

Is it unreasonable to imagine that manufacturers might ship their product with this problem already resolved?

Yes, I think it is unreasonable. Machinery can leave tiny residual amounts of substances on the objects they produce, and converters are $5 disposable consumables in the grand scheme of things. There would be a price if every unit was to be inspected under forensic lighting to see whether it has any residual substances on any of its surfaces (which may or may not be completely removed with just a flush by a machine) that could impede performance.

 

The requirement that we be fiddlers: Don’t get me wrong, I like tuning my nibs. I like aligning tines, and I like knowing my way around micromesh and brass shim-stock. There is satisfaction and even pride in a well-hacked feed.

No more than there is a requirement for automobile owners to be mechanics. If you buy a new car and have issues with how it performs, then after you experience the dissatisfaction while driving, make the time to take it back to the dealer and have them service and resolve the particular issue. How much does a car cost again, compared to a pen?

 

But we all look back with derision at a time when car ownership required thorough mechanical knowledge. One can now own and enjoy motoring without knowing the first thing about motors -- and that is an *advance*.

If a pen writes 'too dry' for the individual user's preferences, but nevertheless lays down a line of ink without skipping, is it still faulty? What about 'too wet' (as is sometimes my subjective experience with new pens, especially European ones)? Or should I conclude that they actually write, and plausibly have passed the factory's adequate QC, but I just don't like it and that's my 'bad luck' having to experience it in the first place, even if the retailer and/or manufacturer will take responsibility for the effort and/or costs of subsequent adjustments to make the pen write more acceptably to me?

 

Cleaning pens: Sure, there’s a therapeutic element of “chop wood, carry water” to my monthly ritual of cleaning pens. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a PITA. I have sympathy with folks who think life’s too short for writing implements that require continual cleaning.

Even the most expertly made blades for samurai swords require cleaning after each time it draws blood. Of course, these days you can buy ceramic blades with self-sharpening scabbards or some such, but does that make for better cutting instruments, either objectively or as artisan creations?

 

Ink drying out in a pen: We’ve all done it. It sucks. The user is entirely at fault, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a thing that afflicts us. Crusty pens suck.

Thus Platinum has a selling point in its pen models that are equipped with the 'Slip and Seal' mechanism.

 

Lack of standards: As I wrote in a recent post about Cursive Italics vs Stubs, I’m a person who likes known knowns. So, within reason, I like standards, rules. I’m an empiricist with an unholy admiration for precision that asymptotically borders on certainty.

Being a mathematician by training and spent my career in designing, implementing and remediating IT 'services', I'm personally glad there is no big hoo-hah about global industry/technical standards, drive for seamless interoperability, and all that jazz that's supposed to ultimately benefit the user/consumer, for things we use it producing analogue 'art'. If someone were to sit you down and say, forget about your decades of user experiences with fountain pens, this is the new standard, and if you get a pen that fits this particular designation it will write like this irrespective of your personal preferences, because your preferences and experienced-based expectations are no part of that standard and have no standing — how would you feel about that?

[UDog]

Houston, I compliment you on your skill as a writer.

[Houston]

Reading the replies to this post was a fascinating experience. Some agreement, some disagreement.

I thought my self-indulgent outpouring might garner replies revealing others' peeves. Not so much. Either I was exhaustive, or the topic isn't that interesting, or others don't experience any frustrations alongside their pleasure in using FPs. No matter; just intriguingly counter to my entirely speculative presumptions.

Mostly, I wrote the original post as catharsis in a supportively knowledgeable community, after decades of enjoying fountain pens and championing them among the uninitiated, keeping my minor, niggling annoyances to myself. I did so wondering if my niggles were similar to others' niggles.

A few things have come up in the responses that have made me want to clarify my original intent or view.

My attitude about all this: The post started with a profession of love, and ended with an expression of gratitude. That framing accurately reflects my attitude in composing a list of minor annoyances. Beyond that, it's a truism that constructive identification of sub-optimal outcomes is an essential element of continuous improvement but, here, I was just casually howling at the moon.

Perfection as a standard: Some comments suggest I am applying an unreasonable standard in my expectations -- perfection, Six Sigma, etc. That may be as much or more in the reading as it was in the writing. For removal of doubt: I think "better" is both possible and reasonable. "Perfect" is neither, whether or not it might be desirable. I hold the hope that increasing standards of quality be commensurate with price. My experience in the world of fountain pens has not always found this to be the case.

Industry standardisation: I dislike homogenisation. I love interoperability. There is often a tension between them. But thoughtful standards can pull off the trick of getting the best of both outcomes. I would argue -- just as an example -- that USB standards have increased interoperability *and* an explosion of variety and creativity in peripherals. Standardisation does not have to imply homogenisation, and it certainly does not require reductive, tone-deaf design. Standards merely mean a level of relative consistency when folks follow them. Markets for non-standard products -- artisanal, bespoke, and otherwise -- can and do thrive in relatively standardised sectors. I was simply suggesting that there are realms in which standards would be a boon to FP users. An example: I see many benefits, and no drawbacks, to the proposition that all "standard international" converters might reliably fit all "standard international" c/c pens. That they don't is a manifestation of variability with no benefit I can think of.

Out-of-the-box performance: It may be that the (widely expressed on FPN) experience of disappointment with new pens is a result of mis-matches between expected versus actual performance, and is not so much about product failure, per se. Not sure; no way of knowing. But I was writing from the perspective of someone who's had a good number of pens with nib, feed or filling/flow issues that made them literally or essentially unuseable out-of-the-box. I find it disappointing that the experience is apparently common. But others rightly, if implicitly, point out that (1) we don't know how common, (2) we don't know to what degree the products objectively fail, and (3) we do not have a common standard for "how frequent is too frequent". Then again, my post was simply about what *I* find disappointing. No claim to objective truth, just the truth of my experience, which is that too many new pens don't write goodly.

Lastly, there is a mostly implicit bias in the initial post that I might have made more explicit. I enjoy fountain pens so much, I'd love for more folks to enjoy them, too. Some of the problems I enumerated aren't problems for the devoted -- or they're, at worst, minor annoyances we know how to fix. But I imagine FP noobs encountering some of these things -- especially QC-related issues -- and surmising that their cruddy experience is endemic to FPs as a category: a pain, not a pleasure. We tinkering devotees won't be put off, but barriers to broader adoption are still a thing I think about.

Anyway, I'm grateful to the folks who read the original cathartic post, and even moreso to those wo took the time to reply -- especially to those who have different views and experiences. I learn most in dialog.

And to the couple of folks who said kind things about the writing: Thank you for encouraging a scribbler who's never satisfied.

-- Houston

PS: I don't believe perfect human beings exist, but if I could be a perfect husband, I'd sign up.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Houston

[A Smug Dill]

Lastly, there is a mostly implicit bias in the initial post that I might have made more explicit. I enjoy fountain pens so much, I'd love for more folks to enjoy them, too. ...‹snip›... barriers to broader adoption are still a thing I think about.

I think that says heaps about apparent differences in our outlooks.

 

I enjoyed the practice of martial arts¹ so much, I'd love for more folks to enjoy it too. That doesn't mean I want martial arts to be (or become) easier to learn by their very nature², or carry less risk of injury, which could put a (student or master) practitioner out of action, and/or deter someone from taking up or continuing a discipline. If I want more people to enjoy the practice of martial arts, then as far as I'm concerned it's fundamentally about changing their minds and perception, as opposed to redesigning or 'improving' martial arts as some sort of system.

 

I feel the same way about 'the hobby' of acquiring³ and/or using fountain pens and paraphernalia such as inks. Sure, as an enthusiast (but I certainly don't see myself as either an ambassador or an evangelist), I don't want to see a newcomer to a martial arts school or club get treated roughly, punched in the face, or ignored by the cliques of old-timers on Day One, and similarly I don't want the first fountain pen someone uses to be defective or repulsive. Thus, if say I was giving fountain pens to my nieces and nephews, beside catering to what they would find physically appealing (in terms of size, colour, etc.), I would also want to have checked the pens myself first. That's how I look after the interest of newcomers, in much the same way as being there for someone's first session at a martial arts school I recommended or a club to which I've introduced him/her.

 

I think it would be folly, however, to call for every martial arts school and club under the sun to 'clean up their act', be more welcoming, and so on. I also don't personally hate it that some clubs are rougher or less welcoming to newcomers; some instructors are poorly trained themselves and/or under-equipped to teach; some masters expect too much of their students; and some prospective learners can just sign themselves up, without guidance, to particular martial arts disciplines that may be ill-suited to their physiques, capabilities or training goals. Any and all of that pitfalls could turn someone off the exploration or pursuit of something I love, but it is what it is.

 

In reading your posts in this thread, I get the feeling you're approaching it from more of a consumer mindset -- not that there's anything wrong with it, and it certainly isn't incompatible with being a hobbyist and an enthusiast. That's not meant to be a put-down, but just how I see your approach to spreading your professed love of fountain pens. You seem to want other parties -- with primary focus on industry -- to do more towards converting others into hobbyists like us.

 

I'm of the view that, if industry worked harder at it, it would be (tacitly or expressly) to increase sales, vie for a larger wallet share of the consumer base, squeeze more spending out of the individual retail purchaser, and make businesses more profitable; that we get to benefit from better products or industry standards would be both the lure and something secondary to for-profit enterprise's self-serving goals -- and, again, not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

'They' don't have to love us or put our interests first, but of course it is in their interest to grow their customer base, especially those with a consumerist outlook: earn, spend, buy, use, discard/replace, then rinse and repeat. My question to you is, would you really like industry to do more, with the implicit understanding that its ultimate goal in doing so is to extract more revenue from us and also those you would like to see converted? Yes, I'm drawing a link between spreading the love of 'the hobby' to others and opening their wallets, which you may not have intended.

 

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way either exclusively or necessarily, but in looking to industry to take the initiative and do the heavy lifting in converting others, I think that would be the tacit deal.

 

 

¹ I'm not talking about any specific discipline or style there; I've done a few.

² By that, I mean it requires the development of one's hand-eye coordination, strength, flexibility, sensory acuity and so on; I wasn't referring to the methods of instruction or training approaches.

³ I'm not really interested in debating what counts as 'collecting' and what is only 'accumulating'. I think 'the hobby' is a broad church, with no group of like-minded individuals or no set of preferences having valid claim to being representative of fountain pen users/enthusiasts and thus sidelining or casting others as outliers, or occupying its nucleus and being in a position to define the vocabulary to which other 'hobbyists' are expected to align.

Edited March 10, 2019 by A Smug Dill