Search the Community

HELLO FPN MEMBERS I am a Delhi based research student who has just entered in the world of fountain pens. I purchased two fountain pens Pilot Metropolitan and Jinhao X750 from Ravi’s Pens point very recently after my disappointment with Camlin Trinity (its ink flow turned out to be terrible). I have decided I won’t upgrade to Lamy or TWSBI now. I know you guys might get be getting this a lot to the extent it might sound little banal but I am looking for budget fountain pens under 1000 INR (15 dollars). I am thinking to buy a platinum preppy soon but I really want to try some Indian fountain pens and will be glad to get some recommendations especially that are decent writers for long writing sessions. I prefer my Jinhao over my Metropolitan so I think I have a preference for a medium nib. Also I have realized, a paper has a considerable impact on the performance of a fountain pen. After the recommendation by Ravi, I tried locating JK cedar 100gsm in North Delhi only to end my search in dismay (couldn’t find it anywhere in stationaries but I have not tried Nayi Sadak). The price offered by Amazon for Cedar is more than 400 INR (including delivery charges). I am looking for budget decent performing notebooks or sheets for note-making and daily writing that are good alternatives to Cedar. Other issue I am facing is drying of ink in my Metropolitan. I used Ravi’s (pen point South ex) Ink with my Metropolitan but I have realized I have to shake it repeatedly otherwise it stops writing and it also dries quickly. I can’t write and read simultaneously with metropolitan’s cap dismounted. Although I didn’t face the same problem when I used Pelikan 4001 with Jinhao and the uncapped Jinhao performs decently even after I don’t put back the pen cap quickly. I think it is the drying problem of the ink and not the pen. I have used Camlin royal blue ink and found it a decent performing ink. What are other decent budget inks that don’t get dry quickly? Any insights on the above issues would be appreciated.

Here it is... a somewhat short review, with rather a lot of pics to tell the story. Rushing round Daiso, on the way out, noticed something somewhat familiar on the way to the checkout, snagged it for leisurely consideration later... Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, the Rosso Bianco! Nice sturdy matte black cardboard box. It says 'RB' for Rosso Bianco on the clip, see! And Rosso Bianco on the band! But wait... here's one I prepared earlier...! Twins! Comes with a slim cartridge, black, not b-b as it says on the box, of a variety I've never seen before. Might I guess it bears a passing resemblance to... a Jinhao cartridge? But does it do what it says on the tin (box)?

I have noticed that there are two slightly different Jinhao x750 models - they differ at least in a font used for spelling 'Jinhao' on the cap. One model uses a regular font, while the other one uses a squarish font. I personally have a number of pens from one of those types (the squarish ones), and except for some problems in painting of a grip section (which is often not uniform) they seem finely made, though I didn't use them for a long enough time to be certain about their quality. I wonder whether one of those types is a fake and therefore of an inferior quality, as often happens with fake Chinese pens. Or maybe there really were two versions of a pen where one of those is an improved model - which is also quite common with Chinese pens, and then it would be interesting to know what exactly was improved in addition to changing a font. Do you have some information about this? It would be very interesting to know all the details about it. Here are the pictures of those different models - I just downloaded them from different sellers on an ebay:

Hello! This is technically my second topic, but I only just found out about this introduction forum. I've been pretty active on reddit.com/r/fountainpens (my username is the same as on here) these past couple months, but I thought I'd join this forum as well! I've been using fountain pens since I was 13 I think, but around sometime last year I kind of started collecting more pens. Up to that moment I had written with a cheap (around 3 euros) fountain pen from a Dutch store. That one had been used and abused a lot, so I wanted to buy a new pen. At this point I didn't know much about fountain pens, so I got a Parker Jotter, thinking it would be a good pen (because it was a Parker). I also just really love Parker's arrow clip and have pretty small hands, so I thought I'd like it. I didn't, and started using my old pen again, mostly. Then later I got a Jinhao x750 (white) and a Lamy Safari (Petrol, F) and I really liked those. I started buying more inks, and ended up with a couple more Chinese pens, including a black matte x750, a Jinhao 992 and a Jinhao 911. A few days ago I got a Parker 45 CT Flighter with a 14K nib (a Fine, I'm pretty sure), which is my first "serious" pen, I suppose. I recently got a bottle of Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün. I'm usually not a fan of bright colours, but this one is such a joy to use. Other than that I've been using Lamy Petrol, Pelikan Brilliant Brown and Waterman Absolute Brown a lot. I'm planning on ordering some iron gall ink and other permanent ink soon, I'm currently looking at KWZ Mandarin, Turquoise and Noodler's Black. The latter not being too exciting, but the only black I currently own is Waterman Intense Black and it's not permanent and not, well, intense enough for me. I'm planning on buying a black Pilot 91 with a SFM, FM or SF nib this month. I actually have a question about that to anyone who owns a Pilot soft nib: would you say it's suitable for quick, daily note taking? Or would I be better off with a stiffer, regular nib? Also, would you say a SFM would be too wet to use on cheap paper? I'm a college student, so being able to use it on cheap paper would definitely help. Sincerely, thespyingdutchman

Hey there community! For all you newer folks out there wondering about how Noodler's Ink's Bad Blue Heron works in a Pilot Metropolitan (F) and Lamy Al-Star (EF). Here's the story. YMMV. A while ago I made a posting asking about how to pair Noodler's Ink's Bad Blue Heron successfully with my Lamy Al-Stars (EF) and what nib replacement I should use. I was running into major flow and start issues at the time with the EF nibs; Bad Blue Heron would often dry on the nib and cause the pen to fail to start immediately upon touching paper, and the overall flow through the pen after I got it to write was intermittent at best. I was not amused. After asking this great community for advice and searching the forums I learned several things: 1. Bad Blue Heron is not a well behaved ink, and what I experienced was a common thing for some other people. It's a hit or miss when inking up pens with this ink. 2. The Jinhao X750 is a sufficiently cheap beater pen that can come completely apart for cleaning and replacing the nibs, and so is a perfect candidate for testing inks in. It comes in a #6 M nib (to my knowledge), so you can replace the nib to any other sizing (e.g. F) so long as it remains a #6 nib. 3. Noodler's Ink's Bulletproof Black seems to be well behaved in many pens. So what I did was flushed out my Lamy Al-Star using Bad Blue Heron and inked it up with Bulletproof Black and never looked back. Problems on the Lamy front solved. But as far as the Bad Blue Heron was concerned I didn't want to waste the bottle of ink so I contemplated ordering the Jinhao X750 to test it out in. However, with a perfectly good Pilot Metropolitan (F) lying around and my impatience getting the better of me, I inked up the Pilot Metropoitan (F) with Bad Blue Heron instead. I rolled the dice and I was rewarded (YMMV and do not try with expensive pens). It so happens that Noodler's Ink's Bad Blue Heron works very well in my Pilot Metropolitan (F)! Bad Blue Heron's behavior in the Pilot Metropolitan was akin to the proprietary Pilot inks that I initially bought with the pen. I've been using my Pilot Metropolitan (F) with Bad Blue Heron for the last three weeks and the ink's behavior is consistent and predictable. When I touch pen to paper (whether the paper is cheap and absorbant or glossy and smooth) the ink flows immediately. The line layed down by this pen and ink combination is crisp and well approximated in the less absorbant papers, and on very cheap absorbant paper (writing pads from Costco) it fuzzies up just a tad (but not enough to ruin your writing). And throughout your writing session, there is no discernable flow issues as you write page to page. As a caveat however I must admit that if you leave the pen uncapped for a good while, the ink will characteristically dry a bit on the nib. But even after purposely doing this, my Pilot Metropolitan (F) still began to write almost immediately after touching paper. Also, you will experience the same nib creep that you get in other pens with this particular set up as well. Otherwise, the Pilot Metropolitan (F) and Bad Blue Heron pairing has been a stable workhorse of mine now and will continue to stay that way into the foreseeable future. Let me know what your experiences are with this and other Noodler's Inks. And feel free to add any information you think pertinent. - Thanks for reading, MPenn TL; DR = The Pilot Metropolitan (F) and Bad Blue Heron combo works well and writes great! YMMV

I just received one of the New Goulet Pens black nibs in the mail (this one is a 1.1)! I threw it onto my Jinhao X750, loaded up some Private Reserve Ebony Blue, and did a quick test on some Kokuyo Sarasara paper. What can I say? This is one excellent nib. I usually have to do a bit of tuning with JoWo nibs, but this one is perfect right out of the box (or rather the tiny zip lock bag). Crsip, true to size lines with a nice even flow. A good looking nib that writes really well and costs $10 less than the Monteverde black stub nib. I'm a happy customer! I was so excited to try out this nib that I didn't even dilute the Ebony Blue. Usually it shows up as a blue/green/black, but without dilution it just looks black. Oh well, I'll just write a ton with this pen and fill it back up with some properly diluted Ebony Blue.

Hi fountain pen lovers, I've just posted a review on Youtube about issues I've had with Jinhao X750 pens and what I think of them. Here is the link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXJd6JUHX3s Cheers! John

Hi everyone, I've recently started using fountain pens in the last few months (beginning with an impulse buy of a Pilot Varsity at a stationery shop, though that's a story for another time...), and I've already acquired a number of them. My workhorse pen is the first real one I bought after the Varsity: it's a silver Pilot Metro with a medium nib. It writes beautifully and reliably filled with Namiki Black, and I carry it around in my pants pocket with no problems. However, it's also recently developed a strange tendency - the Metro is a snap cap, and sometimes if I hold the cap and the rear of the barrel, the metal barrel detaches from the rest of the pen instead of the cap (just posterior to the plastic trim part). This reveals some sort of plasticky-housing thing. Now, my instinct tells me that some sort of glue that should hold the two together has failed (maybe I shouldn't have carried it around in my pocket all the time?). Is this correct? Should I use a glue to fix it, and if so, what kind? Or maybe I should contact either Pilot or the store under a warranty? As it is, it's not a problem as long as I remember to hold the plastic trim when uncapping the pen, so I'd rather not risk anything that might actually screw it up. (I've since acquired two more Metros (!) so my last-ditch option is to just swap the barrels). The other pen I got at the same time as the silver Metro is a Jinhao X750; I don't like it as much as it skips quite a lot and starts badly, to the point where it's unusably annoying. On top of this, while cleaning it I did something to it such that the entirety of the pen mechanism now attempts to fall out the front of the pen! If I remove the cartridge/converter and assemble the pen, the entire plastic nib/feed assembly falls out of the metal ring that holds it (the section? or is the assembly the section?) and on to the floor, into the sink, etc. With the converter, it stops as the converter seems too big to fit through the metal ring. Between the nib performance issues and my worries about having the ink-transporting joint be load-bearing, I've stopped using the pen. What did I do to the pen, and what should I do to fix it? And what might I try to help the skipping? I started making progress by switching to Noodler's Greune Cactus Eel, but the auto-disassembly cropped up about then. Thanks so much! Edit: Added Jinhao X750 to tags