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Dear FPN members, my name is Francois and I joined FPN about 1 month ago. I am sharing my San Fountain Pen Experience further below. I am originally from a little town north of Montreal, Canada. I bought my first fountain pen in 1995 in Montreal; it was a Sailor 1911, pen that got stolen when I was working in London = ( I furthered my fountain pen passion when I moved to Paris, France in 2002: I noticed that the use of fountain pen was more common in Paris than it was in Canada, and that you could easily find where to buy fountain pens AND quality paper in almost all stationary stores and large stores (like Galeries Lafayette) on top of specialty stores. The variety available was amazing. Now back in the US (I now live in Berkeley, California) I find it very difficult to find affordable fountain pen stationary supplies (*quality paper), although I recently found a little store specializing in fountain pens and stationary close to my place. My sad fountain pen experience: ​​While living in Paris, I decided to treat myself and buy another fountain pen, a Waterman Carène, black with Silver trim, very nice mid size nib. Given my lack of experience, and probably for the lack of cleaning my fountain pen on a regular basis, the flow of the pen was very irregular. So being impatient, I started tapping the nib of the pen on paper to "revive" the flow, and bent the nib... not realizing that I had damaged the pen, I started hating using that pen and put it back in a box, forgetting about it, in 2003.... Years later, 2017! I move back to Berkeley, California, open my boxes and re-discover my Waterman Carène. So I tested it to find out that the nib was bent... because of my own carelessness. I sent the pen to the distributor of Waterman, in Canada, for repair. I cost me a pretty penny (half the price of a new one) but it is worth it! of course for sentimental reasons (treasure bought in Paris 15 years ago)!!! and also for the pleasure of keeping this as part of my very small collection of fountain pens! Lessons learned: ​1 - CLEAN YOUR FOUNTAIN PENS ON A REGULAR BASIS ​2 - THE FOUNTAIN PENS ARE FINE TUNED, DELICATE WRITING INSTRUMENTS; DON'T BE ROUGH WITH THE NIB! ​I hope you appreciate my sharing of this sad experience and that it will help some of you, preventing you from damaging your pen (s)!!! Francois

I am bummed. Was organizing my (formerly my father's) pen collection and one of the Wahl Eversharp pens broke off in many pieces on the end. The pen is in lovely condition otherwise. Thinking maybe somebody out there would have use for the cap or nib...I was thinking like $30.00 or $40.00. Please let me know if that seems outrageous for parts or any thoughts about what else I can do with this pen. I am kicking myself for my carelessness. It was such a pretty pen.

Hi folks! noob here to Fountain Pens. I've got four (well, I lost two, and am super super upset about that, but whatever). Anyway, I have a Sheaffer VFM and I just got my Parker Sonnet matte black F in a few days ago. I've been writing with it a lot, but it skips wayyyyyy too much for a $100 pen. I got it through amazon, so I'd assume it's legit, though I suppose it could be fake. Anyway, it's smooth as butter when it writes, but there are often a lot of skips when I write with it. I tried flushing it with a dish soap mixture through the converter a few times, and also i tried to clean the feed with the same soapy mixture. I'm using de atramentis atlantic blue ink in it. here's a pic of how it writes. any ideas why it might still be skipping? i'm really upset about it because i love the pen and really want it to actually write.