Help! I Need A Good Beginner Fountain Pen.

[asegier]

It depends on the pen and the ink. Taking a regular dye ink that has dried up in a pen you can disassemble the section of, it won't ruin the pen because the ink will dissolve when the pen parts are submerged in water. A more complicated pen or ink will make a pen harder to get back in shape because the you cannot get the ink out or the ink was chemically distorted the innards of a pen.

 

I suppose you'll have to define complicated... Are you thinking of older pens? How about just any modern pens?

 

or what about an older 1950's piston filler?

[ac12]

 

 

For $15, you can go on eBay and get about 5 different Jinhao pens, each in a different size. They're great writers despite the cost, and typically come with a converter, so you can use bottled ink. From there, you can figure out what size pen suits you, and if you decide you want to upgrade, you have a good idea of what you like. Makes more sense to do this than spend $15-$30 on one pen that you may end up hating. You can also experiment with inks in these pens, because if you fail to maintain the pen properly, or the ink ruins the pen, you're only out $3, whereas you'd likely be pretty upset to ruin a more expensive pen.

 

Some of the Chinese pens are a Cr@p Shoot.

- In my experience, the Baoer 388 has had an 80% need to adjust the nib to get the ink to flow decently, or even at all. This is over about 15 pens, so not a statistically valid sample size, but enough for me to know that I have to test every B-388.

- The Baoer 801, has been the opposite, every pen worked fine from the start.