Inky T O D - Wet Ink & Dry Pen Or Dry Pen & Wet Ink - Which Do You Prefer?

May 7, 2014

After discovering the forums, and lurking a lot reading recent and older topics, I've found myself thinking that what I've read the most was that people tend to prefer wet pens.

Have I been wrong and the sample of topics I read just induced me in error?

I'm questioning about this subject because I personally hate wet pen. I dread them. I don't also like them so dry that they skip when writting at a faster pace. The method I've come up with to grade if a nib is inside my expectations is drawing a fast line across the paper. If the pen just ever so slightly skips at that fast speed it's perfect. If it doesn't too wet. If it skips while writting obviously too dry.

I find it much more tolerable to deal with a small amount of grittiness due to the dry character rather than with the wet ink taking longer to dry over the paper and (for people like me with smaller handwritting) sometimes getting letters all munched up because of too much ink.

Liking dry pens, is it a rare case?

May 7, 2014

I don't know... and that's a great question.

Based on my actual purchases, I think prefer dry pens and wet inks.

May 7, 2014

After discovering the forums, and lurking a lot reading recent and older topics, I've found myself thinking that what I've read the most was that people tend to prefer wet pens.

Have I been wrong and the sample of topics I read just induced me in error?

I'm questioning about this subject because I personally hate wet pen. I dread them. I don't also like them so dry that they skip when writting at a faster pace. The method I've come up with to grade if a nib is inside my expectations is drawing a fast line across the paper. If the pen just ever so slightly skips at that fast speed it's perfect. If it doesn't too wet. If it skips while writting obviously too dry.

I find it much more tolerable to deal with a small amount of grittiness due to the dry character rather than with the wet ink taking longer to dry over the paper and (for people like me with smaller handwritting) sometimes getting letters all munched up because of too much ink.

Liking dry pens, is it a rare case?

May 7, 2014

I prefer my pens on the drier side than the wet side. There is a happy medium for me. Anything from Pilot that is a fine or extra fine is the perfect wetness for me. The Pilot medium and broad points are too wet for my liking. But then there is the Visconti Homo Sapiens extra fine point which I have and it writes as broad as my Pilot broads. The Visconti Homo Sapiens writes as thick as the Pilot broad nibs because the Homo Sapiens is a gusher. The nib material on the end of the Homo Sapiens extra fine is noticeably smaller than the Pilot broad nibs.

May 7, 2014

I generally prefer wet pens. I don't have much tolerance for low flow. I can work around other issues.

May 7, 2014

Today's Inky Topic is from a new FPNer.

Let's give ScratchyNib a warm welcome.

BTW, when I complete this merge, ScratchyNib's post should show up first.

May 7, 2014

Today's Inky Topic is from a new FPNer.

Let's give ScratchyNib a warm welcome.

BTW, when I complete this merge, ScratchyNib's post should show up first.

And it worked!!!

May 7, 2014

It is a delicate balance.

But I would say I am in the middle.

- I don't like a DRY ink line (pen feels scratchy and/or the pen hard-starts and skips).

- I don't like a WET one either (ink takes too long to dry and/or it bleeds through the paper).

I have both type of pens, and I have to adjust as stated in the title to get the ink flow that I want.

- In a WET pen, I will put a dry ink (Cross), to slow down the ink flow (and stop the drips).

- In a DRY pen, I will put a wet ink (Waterman), to get the ink to flow without hard-starting or skipping.

Some times I want the pen a little more wet to get the Cross ink to be as dark as I would like it to be. Then I have to adjust the nib to get more ink flow.

May 7, 2014

Hi,

I share your thoughts about wet pens - the enthusiasm for 'the glistening wet line' seems contrary.

I often want to generate a bit of shading, so I'll reach for a slightly dry pen regardless of ink, though that will depend on which paper is chosen.

Some inks, especially those with a high dye load, just don't have much shading potential, so for those I'll reach for the wetter pens which put down enough ink to fully dye the paper surface to the extent that bleed-though is avoided.

I reckon that the popularity of inks with a high dye load has inadvertently encouraged adoption of the fully-inked line - some sort of paradigm shift.

Adoption of that paradigm also gives pen makers more freeboard when setting their standards: a wet pen can conceal grinding flaws such as baby bottom or slightly misaligned tines; nib-to-feed alignment can be less precise/accurate; and there'd be more complaints if nib+feed were set so dry that the pen skips than if the set-up was wet.

Which leads me to the recurrence of Topics on how to avoiding bleed- show-through & feathering are quite frequent: not only is FP-hostile paper becoming more common, but that ink+pen combos are quite wet. Not everyone wants to write with iron-gall inks or tinker with their pens.

When given opportunity to have a nib professionally tuned to my preference prior to purchase or as part of re-shaping/restoration, I often ask for wetness of 4.5 on a scale of 10.

Bye,

S1

Edited May 7, 2014 by Sandy1

May 7, 2014

For me it's just about the result I prefer, a reasonably wet flow in pens with round nibs, and if I get that, I don't care whether a dry pen produced it with a wet ink, a wet pen with a dry-ish ink. Like most FPNers, I'm sure, I match the flow properties of the ink to the nib/feed of a given pen to get a Goldilocks result. For italic nibs, however, I need a slightly drier result to avoid compromising the line variation. But not too dry.

Edited May 7, 2014 by Bookman

May 7, 2014

+ 1 for Bookman's post. I write with either flexible nibs or italic nibs. Have pens that are used for calligraphy and for general writing. The calligraphy pens run drier, with sharper edges so as to get maximum contrast. Prefer to write slowly with such pens, whether doing italic or copperplate. My general writing is done with a bit wetter pen and ink, is done faster, and loses some contrast between thicks and thins. Just a matter of the purpose of one's writing.

Enjoy,

May 7, 2014

In French school, we had fairly dry but non-skipping (often waterman, or reynolds) pens. The idea was to write as much as possible on a single cartridge. We had to write a lot in the late 90s. At top pace I was writing about ten pages/hour. So it could not skip. These pens were really good and cheap. The paper was really good too.

In that context, the flow and ink were simply standard. It was what worked.

My own preference went for wet sheaffers. But I have to admit, that in that context, they did a messier job and costed a lot more per pen, per cartridge, and per page written.

These days I still very much prefer wet pens and wet ink, and I still use a little dryer combination than I'd like, to stay functional. I should also say that I write almost exclusively in F and EF, so that even with wet pen&ink, there is only so much ink in my strokes.