I've watched a couple videos recently showing use of a Majohn Q1—a Chinese knockoff of the long-discontinued Tombow Egg—with a fude nib for sketching. The idea here is that the pen is so short that if unposted, it's practical to to hold it for long periods of time at a low angle to the page, taking advantage of the fude nib to do very broad strokes.

I thought that I'd give a Q1 a shot, see if it could be used to fill in large areas instead of using a brush or brush pen. I'm a sucker for high-contrast black-and-white stuff, and it sounded to me like it'd be great for doing large, filled-in black areas.

Platinum Chou Kuro has a reputation for—while expensive—being the blackest fountain pen ink out there, and sounded like it'd be a great idea to pair it with that pen and nib to fill those areas in, maximizing that contrast.

This wasn't as good an idea as it had initially sounded to me.

The problem is that while Chou Kuro is very black, it's a pigmented ink and dries atop the paper. Using a fude nib and going back over one's strokes causes the ink to be pushed around, varying its thickness and making the pen strokes visible.

Once the ink has dried, the pigment appears to prevent more ink from being wicked onto the paper, so one also can't go back and then darken areas with another coat.

The image of the man with the dog was done with a fude nib Majohn Q1 with Platinum Chou Kuro on Iroful paper.

For contrast, here's an image of the USCG Eagle done with a TWSBI Eco EF nib with TWSBI Black, also on Iroful paper:

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/84b808f0-c6b5-40a0-82e3-ed945fb64124.avif

TWSBI Black is a dye-based ink, not a pigment-based ink like Chou Kuro. While you can still see pen strokes, it's much less pronounced and was possible to go back and clean them up. I imagine that it's even possible to use a water brush or something and to smooth it out, since TWSBI Black isn't waterproof; once Chou Kuro dries, water does very little to it. TWSBI Black also isn't particularly prone to shading in online tests that I've seen compared to other blacks, which should also help with uniformity of brightness.

I think that, for filling in areas, having more-consistent lightness within an inked area is more-desirable than having a bit darker ink.

WebP versions of each, for anyone who might be using a client that can't handle AVIF:

Man and Dog WebP

USCG Eagle WebP

I made myself a "work tray" from watercolor paper for my fountain pen.

Simple valley and mountain folds every 1/2".

I use a piece of cotton tshirt as a blotter.

I only have one fountain pen, a few nibs and one black ink. So far that's really all I need.

For fun I might end up getting some green-black ink or maybe something salmon colored.

#fountainpen #origami #hobby

Just a warning to anyone else who thought that flex nibs looked interesting and, like me, didn't realize the requirements of needing to use one with existing scripts. Maybe this is obvious to a number of other people, but it wasn't to me.

I like the look of Spencerian script:

I figured, hey, I'm using a fountain pen, which unlike most other writing instruments, can take flex nibs and with them, do variable-width lines. Why not give Spencerian a shot?

I finally got a nib that has decent line width variation, a Fountain Pen Revolution EF Ultra Flex, and put it on a pen, and started practicing letter forms.

I promptly sliced through the paper. Repeatedly.

I took a closer look and realized what was going on.

Usually, when writing in cursive, the pen is at something like 45° from the line of text. I was doing the same when trying to write in Spencerian.

If you intend to write in Spencerian or Copperplate script, the nib must be perpendicular to the line of text, so that a vertical downward stroke is pulling directly towards the pen.

The calligraphy crowd typically uses dip pens that amount to just a nib, and can stick the thing in an oblique holder, so they can have their hand at a 45° angle to the paper, like normal, but still keep the nib aligned perpendicular to the line of text.

But a fountain pen user can't do that. They'd have a huge, unwieldy fountain pen hanging off an oblique holder. If they want to write in a script that requires that nib alignment, they must rotate their hand relative to the paper, and retrain themselves to write that way.

If you aren't really wanting to retrain yourself to write at a 45° angle from normal, you probably can't use flex-nib fountain pens to do Spencerian or Copperplate or similar.

I bought one of the acclaimed Pilot Iroshizuku inks last week. It's also the first ink I've bought at a store in-person. Here it is on my desk at work. I've been using it in a notebook that doesn't really show off any nice fountain pen qualities, but even so, I've been enjoying this ink. The purple color looks great, and it dries quickly, which is nice for a lefty.

Seems like every other fountain pen user besides me has used these before; do you have any favorite colors?

L-R:

• Platinum Prefounte (M)
• Montblanc 146 (M)
• Pilot Capless Decimo (M)
• Hero 330 (Parker 51 demi clone) from circa 2000 with a 1.3-ish stub I ground myself back in the day as a college student with a dremel and wet-dry sandpaper. Actually writes like a dream as long as you keep it in its sweet spot
• Lamy Safari Demonstrator with knockoff 1.1 stub (wife bought me two of them a couple of years apart, so the second one got the experiment)

The Moon man/Majohn B32 is not an original design, but a replica of a 1970's German pen that had a 925‰ Silver body and cap (Montblanc 1266). The B32 is a steel body and cap, plastic (likely acrylic) section, piston pen, that set me back 33,21€ (including everything). It is what I consider a middle size (ø11,5mm - L137mm), middle weight pen (26,6g - 17,6g full of ink, with and without the cap respectively). Its cap is both friction fit and clipped, a bit of an odd system that I don't fully understand. The ink tank is rather small for my taste: I have not done a proper measurement of its capacity, but I can say it's smaller than a Waterman cartridge by quite a bit, I would estimate it to be around 1,0±0,2mL based purely on feel. The feed at least, is designed properly for a piston filler: no nostalgic fins, but a smooth surface on the back of the nib, that allows as clean a feel as a piston pen can offer, and incidentally, also low ink waste, which can't really be attributed to Majohn.

The section is easy to take apart, and allows for a proper cleaning, so there is no need to stick to safe inks. And on the topic of the section, mine got pretty awfully scratched right away (it was pristine out of the box, so I did all the damage myself, but not from egregious treatment on my part), it is a part that worries me to a point that I contacted the seller to know if they can source spare parts, and as of right now, no, and due to the steel spring inside the cap, it will get worse and worse. The piston filler is rather typical: it works but it makes the task of getting a 100% fill with it impossible. I just refill mine by inserting a needle tipped squeeze bottle into it because it avoids a lot of what I hate about piston pens (the need for a deep enough ink container, and for cleaning the dipped parts) and it allows for a 100% fill in one go.

The nib is very smooth, rather broad for size (equivalent to a steel Waterman F), rather wet, I would say 6/10, but I have not tried inks that shift color with wetness so this is only an estimate. The grind on mine offers no line variation, but I don't know if mine is the norm or an edge case as it has very little tipping material, and pictures that I have seen so far seem to show that all nibs have that little. It is rather good at erasing paper texture, but it is also good at conveying paper smoothness. It takes a surprisingly long time to dry out uncapped. The nib has a slight springiness to it, albeit a useless one. The pen feels average in size and weight, thinner than it looks even, it is well balanced, but it has the slightest bit of top weight, barely noticeable. It can be posted, but can't realistically be used like that due to the balance.

I have put three full converters through it, and am now on the forth fill (1x 10% v/v concentration Ostrich 555, 1x Waterman Encre noire (old formulation Waterman black), 2x J. Herbin Perle noire), so I have used it a bit now, and I am surprised by how normal it feels. I can't quite put it into words what would make a pen normal, nor why this one wouldn't be. Though what I can say is that Chinese pens feel Chinese, they lack this sort of natural feeling when writing that most of my European pens have and that some of my Japanese pens have. I am talking about that feeling that everything comes together: weight, balance, shape, size, tightness of the parts, overall rigidity, smoothness and feedback in all directions, but also something unquantifyable that makes me trust the pen; all of that to form a whole greater than the sum of the parts. This one, this B32, it is the first Chinese pen I have used that has that feeling, despite numerous of the Chinese pens I own being very good pens. It is a pen that gets out of the way and lets your write. Again, that is what pens are supposed to do, and usual they do it just fine. I suppose that what I'm saying is that it feels rather European. Make of this what you will.

Overall, this is a very pleasant pen to use, it has interesting aesthetics, even if Majohn can't exactly be praised for that either; it offers more colors than the original, yet only offers one nib size for the assembled pen (both F and EF size are available as spare part, in silver or gold finish). It is on the expensive side, even if I got mine for 33€, current typical price seem to be 44-50€ now. I am a little ambivalent about whether or not I would recommend it, I tend to stay away from piston pens as they are less practical than cartridge pens, though this one is designed properly, and this one is pretty expensive for what it is. I supposed if you love the looks like I do, it's a good pen, but one that has an uncertain lifespan due to the steel on plastic interaction on the section.

Writing samples compared to Waterman steel F nibs of very similar size:

The is the Jinhao 59 with an EF nib, in the "wine red limited edition", all included (shipping, duties, etc.), it cost me 8,19€ to get it. It is fully made of plastic, except for the trim ring, clip and section plug that are made of steel. The whole pen weighs 17,2g with a full converter, it is ever so slightly top heavy, likely due to the clip. It is 118mm long closed, 148mm posted, roughly 13mm in diameter and the section is around 11,5mm where I hold it. The converter sits deeper than in the Elite 95S, closer to a Sailor 21, the mouth is ø3,4. It is not particularly small compared to non pocket pens, but given the fact that I don't care for the pocket aspect, I can't speak for its usefulness as such.

Size comparison with (left to right) the Hero 1079, Waterman Expert and Jinhao 20

The nib feels the same as the ones in the Jinhao 10 and 20, it's just physically larger: it is rather smooth, especially for its size, well tuned, 3-4/10 wetness (great ink efficiency), but the feed is great at keeping up with fast paced writing and even sketching, doesn't have any directional variation, it is not sensitive to paper texture. It writes slightly thinner than a Pilot F, or Jinhao hooded nib from the 911 and 85. Unfortunately, the nib is not an inlaid one, the section is just cut to look like the Elite 95S' inlaid one, and it looks like it was originally designed for a different nib, but as if plans changed somewhere along the way, especially on the feed side.

The feed seems captive inside the section as the section plug seems glued, so I would recommend sticking to safe inks to increase the pen's lifespan, as well as regular flushes. After a little over 4 weeks of use (and roughly 5,5 converters worth of ink) the section and blind cap have developed microscratches from the friction fit cap sliding on and off, nothing obvious, but something to keep in mind for longevity.

Overall, it is a perfectly serviceable pen, it works perfectly fine out of the box, has no glaring issues (at least with the black colorways), and still looks pretty good under normal lighting. My issues is that Jinhao has better pens for the price (like the 88 or 95), both in terms of quality and durability. Still not a bad purchase.

Since I recommended this ink to someone who was unhappy with Nitrogen from Organics studio, I thought I would try to showcase it properly which is rather difficult for a sheening ink.

This is Ostrich's Sea of Okinawa from their sheen line, it presents as a bright blue with red sheen. They are available in 18mL plastic bottles, or 30mL glass bottles. The glass bottles are a lot more expensive per unit of volume (so I stick to the smaller plastic ones).

The Sea of Okinawa is a very well behaved sheen, and depending on the pen and paper it can even be rather subdued: broad wet nibs show it as a bright blue, as it does from this Picasso 902 M. But in this Pilot Custom 74 F, it shows darker, with no shading and a rather flat sheen. This ink is very well behaved on a lot of papers and barely impacts ink flow in the pens I have tried it in. It is a bit of a nib creeper.

This ink can show tremendous shading and sheen on the right paper and in the right pen, and in that respect, it is rather picky, as it favors broader nibs to show shading and variation in sheen. The Waterman Exception even shows a haloing effect with this ink and its rather broad M nib, that I have not seen with anything [and I stand corrected on that]. It behaves well enough to be used as a daily, in work/professional setting, no problem, as basic copy paper will not show outlandish sheen.

(Oxford Essentials, 90g/m² Optik paper)

On this Oxford "Optik paper+", the Picasso 902 M shows some interesting effects, some very light haloing, though not as much as the Waterman Exception M.

(Oxford Essentials notebook, 80g/m² Optik paper+)

Nib creep on Pilot Custom 74 F

Mild haloing on 80g/m² Optik paper+ from a Picasso 902 M

Sheen from a drop of ink on 90g/m² Optik paper, ink name written with steel nib dip pen

On some papers (Clairefontaine's velum papers for instance), it shows a bright red metallic sheen, on some others (like the Optik paper and the Optik paper+) it shows a little more subtle, but I have not seen it feather or bleed though any of the paper I use, including the super cheap Action notebook (still with decent 80g/m² paper). White paper obviously makes the sheen more noticeable, but it does work well with a broad variety of papers nonetheless, it will just be less noticeable. I have also used this ink in a Picasso 916 with a SEF nib that's thinner than Pilot's EF steel nibs, and it caused zero issues in terms of flow, and still showed sheen.

I apologize for not showing the ink in the Waterman Exception after bringing it up, but I just filled it with some Emeraude de Chivor and I love this ink way too much to waste even a drop of it. If anyone is really curious I can add a sample at a later date, but it's really hard to capture haloing.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Ostrich also has a more saturated version of it (that I have not tried) called Aegian sea. But after my experience with their Glen of the sea, an insanely complexe extremely dark purple that looks black, feathers pink and sheens bright metallic green on anything, including toilet paper, I have been reluctant to try it. Because the Glen of the sea has an extremely hard time flowing in a fountain pen, it crusts up everywhere, smudges (pink) even when dry. Diluting it doesn't really help much, it shows less sheen, but not more color and doesn't even improve the flow.

(This is also on my website)

My fountain pen recently ran out of ink and i decided after cleaning it that now is a great time to mix some inks and try to find a new color i like. So i picked up a bottle of red (Corail des Tropiques) to go with the green (Vert Olive) and blue (Bleu des Profondeus) i already had. The photo above shows the colors of these inks, alone and mixed.

In case my handwriting isn't clear enough, on the right of the page (top to bottom) are Vert Olive, Bleu des Profondeurs, and Corail des Tropiques. All from Jacques Herbin, since i thought it would be safest to not mix different brands. On the left are green & blue, blue & red, red & green, and then all three mixed.

The green & blue mix has a bit more green than blue, and the blue & red mix has more blue than red. Still, these turned out to be harder than i expected to measure precisely. I guess that comes down to me using a pipette instead of an eyedropper. I just mixed the inks in three small jars, two colors in each jar, and then painted them onto a piece of cardstock with a small brush. The last one was done by mixing the three test jars after i had samples of each.

My favorite of these is the purple i got from blue and red, followed closely by the dark gray from mixing all three and then the darker green from green and blue. Blue alone is also fine, but i don't care for straight green or red, or those two mixed.

Purple was the least surprising result. I figured green and blue would make something more like teal. Maybe they would have had i used more blue or started with a darker green. The brown i got was more orange than i expected, again because the olive green is so close to yellow. What surprised me most is what i got mixing all three. I assumed i would get a muddy brown but it came out as a lovely light black^1^ instead. Reminds me of storm clouds in low light.

I did ask at my local nice stationary shop about mixing inks, but nobody working then had done it before so all they could say is that it would probably be fine. They did wonder if the inks would mix completely or if i'd end up with a multi-color ink that changes as i write. That didn't happen, they mixed very easily. I could probably get a multi-color ink if i just added different colors to my pen without first mixing them, but they'd still mix together over time and as the pen moves. I imagine marbled ink would work better for a dip pen that can write without stirring up the ink much.

Filling the pen

Filling the pen with my new purple ink was harder than i expected. The jar i mixed it in was too wide (and thus too shallow) to fill it normally. I have a TWSBI Eco so the normal way is to stick the head of the pen into a jar of ink and draw it up with a plunger on the back of the pen. Instead i took the plunger mechanism out of the pen and filled it there with a pipette. I had the pen sitting nib-down in a jar of water in the hopes that that would help stop ink from leaking out before i got the plunger back on. It did not, and also some water got in and i had to scribble for a minute to clear the watery ink and get to the stuff that's visible. What i should have done is set the pen in the jar of ink i was filling it from, so any leaked ink would not be wasted. But now i know for next time.

Notes

^1^ I distinguish dark and light gray from light black and dark white. Dark white is the color of snow at night, light black is the color of an overcast night sky lit up by light polution. Light gray is the color of dusty gravel or clay, dark gray is the color of Batman.

When I started using Fountain Pens last year, I noted that there was something different about the quality of my writing. It seemed to have a different quality to it. At first, I couldn't figure out the reason for it. But as I kept writing I meditated on the subject. As I turned the idea around in my mind for a while, I came up with a few thoughts seemed to explain what I was both feeling and experiencing.

This is less of a check out my collection and more of a is there anything you would like to know more about, a state of the collection of pens I have accumulated over the more than three decades I have been using fountain pens. I don't have anything particularly special, so most of them are known, but there are a few interesting, less known ones.

I started using them not out of my own volition, but because it was mandatory in first grade. Then, when it wasn't anymore, I still stuck with them, because other pens didn't feel quite as nice, not as smooth, required much more pressure to write, and certainly didn't have the array of colors available to fountain pens. So while I didn't originally choose to use fountain pens, I absolutely chose to stick with them. I do occasionally use ballpoints (BIC cristal and M10) and various gel pens, when I have to, but this is very much occasional.

This is not all the pens I have ever had, I have broken, lost, sold and given away quite a few tens of them, this is only what I have today, minus a Wing Sung 601A which is in my lab right now, but I am not going to go get it because of the heat.. and it is not worth talking about too (not a particularly good pen).

I'll present the pens as:

[Brand] [Model name] [Nib size/style/cut] - [name of the colorway],

as expressed by the manufacturer or in the sales pages, in English (usually machine translated for Chinese brands), as available.

Top row, left to right:

• Pimio / Picasso 933 Avignon M - unknown
• Pimio / Picasso 902 Gentleman series M - Agathe red
• Pimio / Picasso 902 Gentleman series M - Black gold cap
• Pimio / Picasso 906 Athens Dynasty M - Blakc and gold
• Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga EF - Red
• Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga F - Muri gray
• Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga SEF - Dawn red
• HongDian C1 Explorer F - Red
• HongDian 517D EF - Matte black and silver
• Jinhao 35 EF - Black
• Jinhao 911 EF - Black and gold
• Jinhao 20 EF - "C" (no further naming found for this color)
• Pilot kaküno EF - Gray
• Pilot Custom 74 F (14k) - unkown

Bottom row:

• Jinhao 100 Naginata & F nibs - Snowflake
• Jinhao 100 M - Black
• Jinhao 100 EF - Tofu
• Jinhao 95 F - Black and gold
• Jinhao 95 M - Red
• Jinhao 85 EF/0,38mm (hooded nib) - DYI colorway (barrel painted with the same paint as my motorcycle)
• Jinhao 85 F (open nib) - Black
• Jinhao 85 EF (hooded) - Blue
• Jinhao 85 EF (hooded) - Blue (same colorway, different batches, lighter is older by several years, difference not due to shifting color)
• Jinhao 75 F/0,5mm - Black red
• Jinhao 88 F - Red
• Jinhao 88 EF - Blue
• Hero 849 EF - Green (it's actually teal and rose gold)
• Pilot explorer M - Red

Top row:

• Platinum #3776 Music nib (14k) - Black (the feed has turned into dust, and no replacement parts are available as Platinum refuses to sell parts for repairs, and I am not paying for the shipping to Japan for a pen that costed my 11800¥)
• Parker Sonnet F (18k) and Cursive (18k) - Chiseled silver (or sterling silver I don't remember)
• Parker IM Premier F (18k) - Black and gold trim
• Parker Duofold International F (18k) - Green tortoise shell and Rhodium (IIRC) trim
• Pilot 78G+ M - Green
• Pilot 78G+ F - Black
• Pilot kaküno F - Soft blue
• Hero 1079 Ultrafine/0,38mm - Black
• Hero 1079 Ultrafine/0,38mm - Yellow
• Hero P108 0,38mm (hooded) - Matte black
• Hero 616 F - Burgundy
• Hero 616 F - Yellow (yeah, I know)

Bottom row

• Unknown pen with generic nib and feed - (actual) Sandal wood
• Unknown pen with generic nib and feed - (actual) Rosewood
• Kaco Mellow EF - Red
• Kaco Retro EF/0,38mm (hooded) - Black
• No idea what this one is, same generic nib and feed as the wood pens
• "Vintage Hero pen" no further details (hooded nib)
• "Vintage Hero pen" no further details (hooded nib)
• Stonego unknown model with "KURM" branding on nib
• Stonego unkown model with "HUASHILAI" branded nib
• Unknown brand and model with generic "Iridium point" nib
• Lambitou 2053 Artistic pen - unknown
• Hero 616 F/0,5mm - Red

Left to right:

• Waterman Allure F - Chrome
• Waterman Kultur F - unknown
• Waterman Philéas M - Black and gold trim (smoothest steel nib I have ever used)
• Waterman Hémisphère M - unknown
• Waterman Charleston M (18k) and OF (18k) - Ivory

Left to right:

• Waterman Exception "slim" M - Black and gold trim
• Waterman Expert II F - Black and gold trim
• Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
• Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
• Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim

Feel free to ask whatever questions come to mind. Do note that I don't necessarily know everything about some of them, I can't even remember how I got some of them.

Edit: Misidentified the Parker Premier for an IM (don't know why I mistake these two all the time)

I have been nearly obsessed with finding a good set of Parker 51 clones. I've had several (from Jinhao and Junlai) that have been disappointing. While they had the look and filling mechanism that I wanted, many of them would fail in terms of writing well, or in drying out. What exacerbated these purchases was that they would all come up when searching for a “Hero 601” on Amazon, which is the pen I'd seen reviewed that was often praised.

I got inspired and decided to try out a few fountain pen inks the other day. I picked up Organics Studio's Nitrogen.

This is a popular saturated blue ink that has a lot of red sheen to it, looks almost like metallic foil when written on sufficiently ink-resistant paper.

I used it with a broad-nib TWSBI Eco. And in that, that, I agree. It does show a lot of sheen.

One really needs video to see the effect, since one needs to tilt it relative to a light source. A static image doesn't really convey the effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEsHNIn1c7w&t=1460s

But there were some big caveats.

It dries out very quickly on one's nib

My big surprise was how extremely quickly the ink dried on my nib, producing a delay until the ink is flowing and a hard start after just a short time out in the air without ink flowing. People do talk about this online, now that I've gone looking for it, but I wasn't aware of it when getting the ink, and I doubt I'd have gotten it if I'd known about this going into it. One can't just stop and think for very long without needing to start writing to keep the ink flowing. For me, this is frustrating, and really kills the appeal of the ink for me. None of my other inks do this.

One really needs ink-resistant paper to see sheen

Another thing that I hadn't anticipated --- not having played around with inks with a lot of sheen prior to this --- is that one really needs ink-resistant paper to see the sheen. On ordinary copy paper, it just looks like a blue ink. I knew that there would be a difference, but not that there would be no sheen. On an inexpensive composition notebook I've had sitting around for probably thirty years in my desk, it looks all right, if not quite as shiny as on Iroful paper.

This probably isn't a huge surprise to people who have used inks with sheen, and it's not going to be specific to this particular sheening ink. But I'd expected some sheen to still be visible on more absorbent paper, and it isn't.

It tends to smear and get on things

In the above video, Brian Goulet does mention this and how the ink is infamous for doing this --- which I find puzzling, given how quickly it seems to dry out on the nib. So I was expecting to see this. But I still managed to get smearing and blue blotches on my hands multiple times, despite being careful. I haven't seen anything like this with the other inks I've used (though I don't have a huge collection, admittedly).

Other

It has a reputation for staining clear pens. I haven't tried cleaning it out after exhausting my current fill, so no first-hand experience with this, but I thought that I'd also mention this, in case someone runs across this post when considering the ink.

Summary

The ink is pretty, if one wants something with a lot of sheen. I don't dispute that. But it really is a pain in the neck to use.

I don't know of a good "Nitrogen alternative" that performs better, but I have to say that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they are aware of what they are getting into.

I don't recall any point in time where I had any interest in fountain pens. I was born well after the time of the fountain pen, and there weren't any relatives in my family that had any special attachments to fountain pens.

Are there any good modern lever fill pens? The only brand I can think of that is still making lever fill pens is Conway Stewart. Are there any others?

Four months ago I posted about this quirky pen I popped into my shopping cart on impulse one night while grabbing some supplies on Amazon.

Well, after that original post I didn't use the pen. I put it away in a case and I forgot about it. Recently, I bought a new, large pen case and moved most of my pens into that case. While I was doing so, I realized I had a bunch of pens that had been sitting around, inked, but unused, including this one.

Last night I pulled out ten pens (five Parker 51 clones, Lamy Safari, Hongdian M2 Brass, Hongdian C1, TWSBI Eco and this Wilknd) to clean out.

Of the pens I pulled out: 2 Parker 51 clones, the Lamy, and the Hongdian M2 Brass had dried out / failed to write. But the Wilknd, the one that was in the case the longest (except for the TWSBI and Lamy) worked immediately. After four months that pen was writing up a storm like I had just filled it and started using it.

Just goes to show: name brand isn't everything. Even the cheapest, no-name pen can perform as well as, and possibly better than a brand name pen.

Where do you recommend for pen purchases? In the past I've used Goulet but there was a post (maybe here?) awhile back about them that inclined me to not give them money any more.

Background : I teach a class about once a year and I like to gift my graduating students a pen because I find it unique and interesting - you don't see fountain pens much anymore. I usually go with a Lamy Safari (but am up for recommendations on similar starter pens; see bottom). In the past they (Lamy) sold a gift set that was the pen and 5 or so of the disposable cartridges in various colors (no Z28 included) and that was my go-to. They don't appear to sell that particular product anymore so I'd reverted to just the standalone Safari and including one extra disposable cartridge since I have quite a few but don't use them.

Preferably a US based distributor.

While we're at it, any suggestions for a good, comparable, starter pen besides the Lamy Safari? Around $30 USD is my max price range since some times I have up to 15 students and that gets... pricey : ) Main consideration is that it's a decent pen that won't frustrate new users but something nicer than a disposable (EG: Pilot Varsity).

This must have been a #mistake. LOL I picked up this 5 pack of Kokuyo Campus B5, 100 sheet #notebooks for $6 per book. Most places list an individual book for $10-$14 USD.

I'm using these books for my daily writing now. Mostly because of the price, compared to an Apica CD Premium #notebook priced at $16 dollars, the Campus seemed like a reasonable option. I've seen that Doodlebud has compared these against his Muji paper, and thought that it was comparable. But since I don't have access to Muji paper here, the Campus is the best option.

These do hold up to #fountainpen usage. While I mostly use a fine nib, I have used a medium and even a broad nib with it, and it's been good. I don't know if it would work well with a 1.1mm nib, but I may try it at some point.

Just refilled my Asvine V200 pens. I go through almost a full fill of #ink in them every 12–13 days. I didn't think I would be filling these #fountainpens as often as I am, but here we are... Guess I just #write that much with them.

Left to right these pens are filled with Diamine Jet Black, Oxford Blue, Aurora Borealis, Writer's Blood and Imperial Purple inks. To their right is the Jinhao x750 filled with Wordsworth & Black Lavender Purple.

It's a three-fer tonight. First is some #ink that I'd been wanting to post for a while now. A few months back I ordered three bottles of Wordsworth & Black in when I got it on special (three bottles for the price of two). While I posted the first two (Royal Blue and Racing Green), the third bottle took weeks to come in. Well, here it is: Lavender Purple. Definitely much stronger on the purple side than the lavender side -- but I still really like it.

And, then there's the pen. The other day when I was placing an order for some other stuff the Jinhao X750 #fountainpen showed up in my recommended list. And, for $8 USD, I couldn't say no. In fact, I added two of them to my cart (the other one is brushed stainless steel). I thought this one looked really cool. I have to say it's a pretty nice pen, cartridge converter, snap-on cap (really strong snap), there is a cap liner for a good seal. The converter came installed by default. Holds about .5-.75ml of ink.

Finally, a little quote for the night. Figured that a little Shel Silverstein was a nice break from the type Lavender quotes. ;)