Lending Pens

[J. John Harvey]

Oh, quite sorry Ryno, I'm not a teacher; I'm actually a senior in high school.

Edited January 16, 2006 by J. John Harvey

[Ryno]

Oh, quite sorry Ryno, I'm not a teacher; I'm actually a senior in high school.

 

Oops, my bad. Best of luck to you as you finish out your high school career. I don't think any of my students use a fountain pen despite my example - or should I say in spite of it.

[PaulK]

I don't loan out my fountain pens, period. There's a few things that I own that are "nice"....in this case, my pens. I use on occasional rollerballs as well...but normally Duofolds, Bexley, Mont Blanc. I don't want to take a chance of some misfortunate accident taking place...to include a walk-off.

 

I will offer, as other suggested, a pen that they can use (I keep a mech. pencil on a pad on the desk).

 

My best,

 

Paul

[Sonnet]

My (now ex) boyfriend gave me my Parker Sonnet for my birthday. After we got home, I offered to let him try it out. And the force with which he pressed down on the nib nearly gave me a heart attack (and I wasn't the one who'd actually bought the pen!)

 

No future pen lending opportunities have come up since then but if they do, I think I'll keep my Lamy Safari on hand for such an occasion (if it gets broken, I'll survive). I have let my mother and few FP-friendly people use my pens because they were already familiar with fountain pens so they knew to be careful and not grind the nib into the paper.

[wimg]

I guess I am lucky, because I live in a fairly fountain pen friendly country. Kids still get taught cursive at primary school, with fountain pens, as part of the curriculum. So everybody here knows a fountain pen when they see one.

 

Of course, many write with BPs and RBs only after they leave primary school, and even can't remember how it was again. A little instruction goes a long way, however, and I gladly instruct, provided there is time and space to do so. Otherwise, it is a BP.

 

I always carry a few Lamy Safaris and Waterman Allures with me, for those who are more serious about it, so they can try for a bit longer, and I may even give away a few . But my Stips and other more expensive pens are always handled under supervision, after appropriate instruction, although telling people how much these pens cost makes them treat these pens with the proper respect anyway.

 

Only rarely I have to tell people not to press too hard. Of course that is due to prior exposure to fountain pens. And even after not having used fountain pens for many, many years, I find they pick things up again very rapidly.

 

Regarding a pen adjusting to your handwriting: it takes so long for a decent nib to wear down enough to adjust to your handwriting (10-30 years or even more, depending on how much you use it, and on the quality of its tipping), that this is pure lore. It is the other way round: your hand adjusts to the pen! And this is unconscious behaviour, although you can do it consciously. Write with a pen for a while, and you automatically find the right position to hold it to get the best result. And if that grip is comfortable to you, you'll find the pen comfortable. If not, you start disliking it quickly . The funny thing is though, that no two pens are the same in this regard, not even from the same brand and model, although mass produced pens can come very close. Of course, weight etc., and general way of holding, on a macro-level when it comes to pens, that is the same.

 

Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I guess .

 

Warm regards, Wim

[J. John Harvey]

It would seem all Europe is fountain pen friendly. France, I know, still requires fountain pens in school, and there is a French exchange student who, when writing to her parents and relatives, uses a fountain pen. It just goes to show how many countries in Europe, in my opinion, are superior to the United States.

 

I think in another life I was French.

[Bill]

A trick I use in my office is to keep a cup full of give-away BP's at the corner of the desk near the door/visitor chair and any working FP's on the opposite site, just past the Michael's display case with "expensive looking" FP's. It has worked so far.

 

I now carry spare FP (Hero 100 or Safari) as a loaner and have asked at times, "Do you know how to use a fountain pen?" as I hand over the capless pen.

 

Bill

[DrPJM1]

When some comment on my use of a fountain pen I let them try it after educating them on opening, nib orientation and pressure.

[Betty]

It would seem all Europe is fountain pen friendly. France, I know, still requires fountain pens in school, and there is a French exchange student who, when writing to her parents and relatives, uses a fountain pen. It just goes to show how many countries in Europe, in my opinion, are superior to the United States.

 

I think in another life I was French.

Yeah, makes me kinda wish I was educated in Europe so I would have known about the fountain pen earlier

 

 

My pet peeve of lending any pens out is the walk-away pen & for my mom, when she returns a pen to me without the cap. I CANNOT stand pens without its cap :bonk:

[OldGriz]

The only people who get to "try" one of my pens are my wife and daughter.. and then only under my supervision....

 

I keep a couple of "cheapies" for allowing others to try a fountain pen and have made some converts. But my "personals" are not used by anyone else but me...

To paraphrase another organization... "You will get my pen when you pry it out of my cold dead hands!!!!!"

[Betty]

Since we don't like lending fountain pens to other non-fountain pen users, I was just wondering how did we learn to write with a fountain pen ourselves? Did we also break some pens?

 

I just remember the only learning process for me was knowing which way the nib was supposed to face. I guess I never really pressed hard when writing?

[OldGriz]

Since we don't like lending fountain pens to other non-fountain pen users, I was just wondering how did we learn to write with a fountain pen ourselves? Did we also break some pens?

 

I just remember the only learning process for me was knowing which way the nib was supposed to face. I guess I never really pressed hard when writing?

When I started to learn cursive, ballpoints were just starting and we were not allowed to use them because they wrote so badly... we had to use a fountain pen...

 

I gues if you are a "youngun" you did not have to go through that...

[Chris]

True. Here in the UK, fountain pens were required at school (from age 11) and if we suffered a mechanical breakdown during a lesson we were allowed to write in pencil, but had to copy it out neatly in pen in our own time.

 

It was an absolute rule that biros were invisible

Any work written in biro would get zero marks, exactly as a blank piece of paper .

 

Marks were lost for poor spelling, punctuation and grammar too, so on a really bad day you could end up with a minus score

 

Apart from a timewhen I worked where black ballpoint was an absolute requirement and EVERYLITTLETHING had to be initialled and dated I have stuck with the real pen. Only of late have I started to accumulate additions to the collection and to branch out into different inks.

 

Can be fun,

Chris

[PaulK]

I'm a (school) child of the late 60's & 70's: no fountain pens. In fact, I recall being told by adults that fountain pens were just "messy." Typical child, that just increased my facination with them (unique "tip").

 

I purchased a cheapie (against my parent's advice) along with several packages of cartridges during my middle-school years. The only mess I recall was from the ink's drying time (smudges). The pen wasn't a wet writer: I remember I would unscrew the barrel from time-to-time to squeeze the cartridge in an attempt to get more ink to the nib. If many of you recall, our school paper was only slightly short of being pressed wood pulp so the pen wrote fairly scratchy and would skip (likely from having to traverse the paper wood chip-to-wood chip!).

 

I tried it, wrote for a while with it, but was unconvinced of its utility. When using it in class, I think the only responses received was in the form of a smirk from my instructors and a few eye-rolls from my fellow classmates.

 

I figured real quick that fountain pens require a light touch. I don't remember pressing down because I thought the tip (never hearing the word "nib" until much later in life) looked very fragile.

 

It wasn't until the past ten years I started using a fountain pen with more regularity. My first was a Mont Blanc 146 given as a birthday present from my wife (what a difference from that first pen!).

 

Paul

Edited January 18, 2006 by PaulK

[J. John Harvey]

From my experience with pointed dip-nibs, I just sort of innately knew that with fountain pens, the metal part should be up.

[saturation]

If persons ask to borrow a pen, often they mean a ball point for some immediate use. I always carry a BP at work due to multipart forms.

 

However, if someone asks to borrow a pen to kind of 'try it out for a few days', that's never happened and I would say no.

 

However, if someone asked to try a fountain pen on-site briefly because s/he wondered about the mystique about it, I would gladly lend it and give a brief lecture on usage. Its a good way to get a convert to the cause!

 

The wear on a nib by another other than oneself is overrated, since just a few strokes by a tester isn't going to redefine the shape of a personal nib shape that tooks years to get there.

[Betty]

The wear on a nib by another other than oneself is overrated, since just a few strokes by a tester isn't going to redefine the shape of a personal nib shape that tooks years to get there.

The personal nib shape won't get there if we keep buying new pens and abandoning old ones I'm sure everyone here has too many pen

[saturation]

The personal nib shape won't get there if we keep buying new pens and abandoning old ones    I'm sure everyone here has too many pen

Absolutely!

 

I resist getting too many pens, because I can't use them all. I have had only 7 since 1983, of which 6 were all purchased new.

 

In between 20+ years I've had a Parker 75, Sonnet and a Namiki VP [my oft used pens], I have not noticed, even by magnification, that the stroke of my pens compared to another of the same model, are truly any different if they were kept in good shape, never damaged, repaired or altered in someway. This is especially noticeable in pen stores, when they allow me to try a model that I own, but am curious about qualities in other pens of the vintage.

[JeffTL]

Interesting thing happened in my Spanish class yesterday.

 

Someone asked to borrow my bolígrafo (ballpoint), meaning the writing instrument in my hand -- a Parker 51, not a ballpoint at all. Supposing that a 51 is pretty tolerant, I didn't dig around for my Space Pen, but rather said "no es bolígrafo; es estilográfica" (it's not a ballpoint, it's a fountain pen) and instructed the use of light pressure. You will all be glad to hear that the borrower had good luck with the pen, complimented it very highly, and returned it in one piece. She might have gotten inky fingers, though, as it was returned to me with some ink residue on the end of the hood.