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Hellooooow And I am Back….. from a much-needed break or you can say Hiatus from this fountain pen hobby. I have been in this hobby for more than 5 yrs now. There has been a lot of love and appreciation given to me and it really has aspired me to become better and more responsible person. Thank you to all of the followers and supporters and especially the admin members of Fountain Pen Network. Now, I have been away from this hobby for almost good 5 months and part of that is due to some personal reasons. First, I have joined a new organization which apart from just Architectural Designing and Coordination takes up more of my time in imparting training and developing new courseware and doing a lot of research work. With the new job, I have climbed up a career ladder and thus more responsibilities (thanks to Almighty God). Secondly, my new job involves a lot of traveling to a different Country where I can’t carry most of my pens and inks and also that Country has a restricted internet policy. I couldn’t access Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram….. the apps or websites I use most often. And lastly, there was a demise of someone close to us in the Family. It was tough. Believe me... But now I am back with more determination and vigor and will take this moment to apologize to all of you who have been following my blog and who have asked me something and I have not been able to answer them in time. Also, I would like to apologize to pen fraternity in India who have sent me some ink samples and pen for review which I have not been able to do so. Thank you for showing your trust in me and my target is to catalog those pens and inks in forthcoming months. So, yeah I have a lot of news for you. I have recently purchased a lot of stuff from my travels abroad and will share those here also. There will be few upcoming Giveaways that I will organize on my Blog and also on FPN. Do follow my Instagram page small updates are also available there. Thank you again for all of the love and appreciation. I can’t wait myself for the upcoming posts. Do let me know if you have certain suggestions and recommendations that you have for me and my blog and my upcoming reviews. Again I would really like to thank all the Admins and Seniors of the FPN. Thank you all.

Hey guys, for those of you who do not know me, I am Michael Dromgoole. I am the 4th generation future owner here at Dromgoole's. We are starting a podcast that showcases new product, interviews reps and customers, and we have some other cool stuff up our sleeve. Please enjoy, and feel free to give me feedback in any form possible. I appreciate you watching and hope to see you back in the future!

Hellooooow And I am Back….. from a much-needed break or you can say Hiatus from this fountain pen hobby. I have been in this hobby for more than 5 yrs now. There has been a lot of love and appreciation given to me and it really has aspired me to become better and more responsible person. Thank you to all of the followers and supporters and especially the admin members of Fountain Pen Network. Now, I have been away from this hobby for almost good 5 months and part of that is due to some personal reasons. First, I have joined a new organization which apart from just Architectural Designing and Coordination takes up more of my time in imparting training and developing new courseware and doing a lot of research work. With the new job, I have climbed up a career ladder and thus more responsibilities (thanks to Almighty God). Secondly, my new job involves a lot of traveling to a different Country where I can’t carry most of my pens and inks and also that Country has a restricted internet policy. I couldn’t access Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram….. the apps or websites I use most often. And lastly, there was a demise of someone close to us in the Family. It was tough. Believe me... But now I am back with more determination and vigor and will take this moment to apologize to all of you who have been following my blog and who have asked me something and I have not been able to answer them in time. Also, I would like to apologize to pen fraternity in India who have sent me some ink samples and pen for review which I have not been able to do so. Thank you for showing your trust in me and my target is to catalog those pens and inks in forthcoming months. So, yeah I have a lot of news for you. I have recently purchased a lot of stuff from my travels abroad and will share those here also. There will be few upcoming Giveaways that I will organize on my Blog and also on FPN. Do follow my Instagram page small updates are also available there. Thank you again for all of the love and appreciation. I can’t wait myself for the upcoming posts. Do let me know if you have certain suggestions and recommendations that you have for me and my blog and my upcoming reviews. Again I would really like to thank all the Admins and Seniors of the FPN. Thank you all.

Here are the sketches I did using the FPN exclusive inks, used each ink to draw the person it was named after, hope you all like it. Best regards. Voltaire Candide Vermilion. Galileo Manuscript Brown. Dumas Tulipe Noire. Van Gogh Starry Night Blue.

I got into the pen habit a few years ago, buying my first one off of eBay for around $15. I'd really like to know more about it, although I've hit a lot of dead ends in my searches. I'll include some pictures, hopefully someone else knows a little more than I. What I know about it: It's Pilot, with a fine 14k gold nib. It's possibly from the mid 60's though I'm not sure. I can't locate a manufacturing date on either the tail or nib. Also, it looks like it takes a Con-W converter. Thank you!

FPN has some of it's own custom inks, made for them by Nathan Tardiff, aka Noodler's. As always, Noodler's inks have some kind of theme going on with the name, and this one is named after Alexandr Dumas' famous 1850 novel Tulipe Noire. Because it's written in French, it's especially famous in France. Since there is no such flower as a Black Tulip, this ink follows the purple tulip. It's a really great "plum" color. There's really great handling with this ink. It's possible that in the right pen and on the right paper it will shade very well, but I've only gotten "ok" shading. But it's still a nice ink. As usual for me, paper used was MvL=Mohawk via Linen, Hij=Hammermill 28 lb inkjet, TR=Tomoe River. This pic I think shows the ink as a bit darker than it really is. And to much blue. This pic is better at representing the color. Somewhat water-resistant. Due to the dye load, some washes away, but enough is left to be readable.

Are we ever going to see the FPN inks? I have a feeling after following for more than a year, and the topic being locked that we are never going to see these again.

My first ink mixing efforts of note are above. After a very exciting couple of weeks after orderingI recently received the FPN Galileo Manuscript Brown (there was a little surprise sample with it - thanks Amber! - but I'll leave a review of that for another day). After reading the reviews of the FPN Galileo Manuscript Brown I was expecting it to be on the red side, but I was a little disappointed to see that for me it was more red than brown. I found it almost similar in look to Diamine Oxblood or even Ancient Copper, but not as dark. It is lighter than the picture indicates. While it is a very well behaved ink with excellent properties I just couldn't see myself using such a light reddish colour as a daily writer. After reading all of the reviews and seeing that someone suggested adding black, I tried a bit of mixing. My first was 3:1:1 Brown:Black:Water and as you can see above was quite dark - a little too dark for my taste. The second effort was 5:1/2:1 Brown:Black:Water. I used Noodler's Black because I felt it was best to stick to the Noodler's bulletproof to minimise the chance of any adverse reactions. I have added added a few ink colours down the side for comparison purposes. Pictures are from a camera phone with indoor lighting. I've been using it for a day now and am very pleased with the result. It writes very well from my Pilot Custom 823 with a very lubricated and quite wet line with no evident feathering or bleed through on the papers I have tired. It does feather on Staples Sticky notes but then, pretty well everything else (apart from Noodler's Black and Iron Gall Inks) does too. I love the colour and the shading and I am very happy that I am able to tailor the colour quite easily by the addition of black in various ratios. The added bonus is I have now effectively extended the life of my bottle of FPN Manuscript Brown. Below are a couple of pictures showing my tryouts on Tomoe River cream paper and a picture of the pen.

I was given this ink as a free sample from FPN when I received my order of FPN Galileo Manuscript Brown last week. Amber described it as Scribes (not Scribal) ink and it was in a sample bottle marked 12B - very mysterious. My review is in the attached images. (Note that I erroneously called it Scribal black on the Rhodia and Tomoe River images) The ink has some nice properties. It is very wet and has medium saturation and a little shading is evident. Quite good lubrication and sticks very well to a dip nib. There was only some very minor feathering in the most saturated parts of the dip lettering on the 80 gsm laser printer paper I used for the main part of the review. No problems on the Rhodia or Tomoe River paper. It is not quite as black to my eye as Noodler's or Aurora, but then few inks are. There is a faint aubergine colour as the ink is laid down which disappears when dry so it might be a very dark purplish black. The ink appears to have a faint silvery gold sheen. I took a photo on the Tomoe River paper at an angle to maximise it. I also put a couple of well known 'sheeners' next to the Scribes Ink as a comparison. It's quite subtle compared to the insanely red sheen of Iroshizuku Shin Kai and the beautiful silvery outline of Sailor Kobe Minatogawa Lime. PS: I just realised I forgot to do the water resistance test It's getting late now so I'll report later on that. PPS: I've just noticed the images are quite compressed on the website. The originals look much better on my phone. I'll try and fix that too.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board, If you check the right hand side of the window, you may well see something new appearing. Yes, promised a few months ago: Advertising indeed. And what this all means to our visitors here, guests and members alike, is a bright future for our little fountain pen nut house on the digital prairie! Enjoy! Warm regards, Wim On behalf of the FPN Admin team

A couple of months back Jeff Pearson posted some comments and queries on my blog regarding fountain pens. Later on among the comments and replies, one day he suddenly asked for my mail address as he wanted to gift me certain fountain pens. Thinking it a bit quirky, I avoided it. Later on after more of such requests I finally relented. btw Jeff is a member of FPN (which I came to know later) & having username notimetoulouse So yesterday I got these wonderful fountain pens - Jinhao x450, - love it Kaigelu 316, - had only seen its reviews on FPN Picasso, - had only heard of the brand Wingsung 380, - I already have it, the same one !!! Lanbitou - so tiny didn't know it existed :-) and also a carefully packed set of ink cartridges - obviously I did not know that these inks also came in cartridges. Thanks Jeff for these wonderful pens and cartridges - and taking the pains to ship these from your end - which is half the world round ! btw the Jinhao x450 is my favourite, and I had been searching for this colour for quite some time :-) And all the pens have very smooth nib, and look great! Images below.

Hi all, I have a question of Richard binder's nibs. I wanted to buy a nib for my Pelikan m200, and was wondering if it would have extra flex and all if i were to buy a standard one from his website. Here is a screenshot of what I am looking at.