Fountain Pens

[condorlover1]

I've got a Waterman I use and I have my Fathers Parker fountain pen which I never use since he was right handed and I write with my left. As a point of reference if you ever need the things fixed use The Fountain Pen Hospital in NYC. They overhauled my Waterman for under $100 with a new nib. They will tackle any age of fountain pen and are not expensive.

 

[buzkirk]

I'll second The Fountain Pen Hospital in NYC, great service and communication.

 

[vates]

It seems to me that a person who appreciates certain physical and nostalgic qualities that pipes embody would also appreciate fountain pens.

Exactly. I had severe FPAD about 6 years ago. Now I posses a handful of "big whales" (MB149, Pelikan M1k, Duofold Cent., Omas 360) along with smaller and simpler FPs.
Although I hand-wright daily, the only FP in my current "rotation" is Pilot Fermo.

 

[PaulTheScandinavian]

Despite what lots of folks consider fountain pens as being outdated, items from the past. I prefer them over any other type of pen and I using them always when possible, I have 2 Deutscher Pelikans,

 

[puff_not_snuff]

Well it’s also nice to carry something that you could very well have you’re whole life—you can’t say that about the newest iPhone.

 

[magicpiper]

I have a blue Lamy Studio fountain pen. I quite enjoy it. Bought it with a decent hardbound journal when my son was born. I didn't know anything about children so I thought I'd write daily ( or as often as I could) journal entries as if I were having a conversation with my son as if he were an adult. Figured he could read it as an adult and see his childhood through my eyes. He's six years old now. I put the full journals in my safe deposit box for him to have in the years to come. They'll outlast me on this Earth.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I've been using Fountain Pens for a little over a decade now, one of my biggest regrets in life is not discovering them while I was in college.
I'd blast through multiple ballpoint pens on a weekly basis, not because the ink was gone but because they always just randomly stop writing after a few days of use. People say there are ways to un-clog a ballpoint pen but I never got it to work.
By the third year I reached the breaking point, searched through my room and took every ballpoint pen in sight and snapped them in half. No matter the brand or price, all of them are nothing but useless garbage.
My last year of study notes was taken exclusively in felt pen.

While felt is very predictable and reliable from moment to moment, those pens are short lived so I was still not totally content. Eventually I discovered Fountain Pens in what seemed like a perpetual search for any kind of reliable writing instrument (I had even bought half a dozen Fisher Space Pen cartridges thinking that surely a $7 pressurized mechanism would be reliable. Definitely not, the Space Pens are no better than your $0.05 Bic).
I remember tearing open another random ballpoint one day and watching the ink spill out onto the paper, thinking how great it would be to just write with a syringe squirting ink onto the page.
I think that finally got me to put the right terms into the online search engine to finally arrive at the ultimate conclusion.

Fountain Pens are the perfect ink delivery system. I seriously doubt a better pen will ever exist.
I have absolute confidence that over the course of human history Fountain Pens will outlast ballpoints. No one will go out of their way to save a ballpoint pen.

The greatest thing about a fountain pen is if it isn't working the way you like, you can always fix it. It's a mechanism that can be understood and maintained, you can personalize every aspect of its writing character. Once you have the right Fountain Pen it's like having a favourite hat or properly fitting glasses, it becomes a foundational element of day to day life.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Never owned one. Are good ones super expensive? Or are they more like pipes, that you can find decent ones for a medium-sized amount?

Jinhao 159 Fountain Pen - Black - The Goulet Pen Company

The Jinhao 159 fountain pen is made in China. It features a large, shiny black body, chrome hardware, and a #6 steel nib. It comes with a converter.

www.gouletpens.com

This in my opinion is about as good as any pen you'll find. The nib and feed aren't a work of art, but they should work.
If you feel like exploring a bit you can easily swap nibs for any other #6 size nib.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Your best bet for a good experience in a "Step Up" pen would be this: https://global.rakuten.com/en/store/hougado/item/platinum-056/
(I managed to snag one in the super broad "C" "Coarse" nib last year, I don't see that option now, these things are also floating around Amazon but prices can fluctuate a lot.)
You can get genuine Japanese gold nibs for very reasonable prices now that global retail is a thing.
Paying a lot of money almost never guarantees a good writing experience but the Japanese are the undisputed kings of quality control. Any gold nib from Platinum, Sailor, or Pilot should hold very similar quality standards.
Even then there are no guarantees, buying online is still a gamble nonetheless, that's the price of skipping the showroom.
(It can be shocking to learn but most of the nib industry still relies on customers to return defective products instead of actually making them all correctly the first time. Among the dozens of pens and nibs I've bought the defect rate is very high, and getting something that writes anywhere near my standards is very rare.)

It's kind of like good drilling in a factory pipe, most of the time if you do find a good result it will have been achieved at random.
If you want to know absolutely for sure that your pen is going to write as well as it possibly can you need to learn to tune it yourself or send it away to a Nibmeister for tuning.
once you know what you're doing it usually only takes a few minutes to align the tines and smooth the tipping but to learn the process yourself will probably mean ruining a few nibs along the way.

 

[mso489]

Fine pens and the penmanship that goes with them are an inspiration and a sensual treat. For actually drafting writing, lists and written material of all kinds, I get shouldered over to specific brands of (groan) ballpoints or the occasional gel pen, just to grab and write. Sharpies too have a kind of lurid attraction. But if you want to know what real written communications should be, a fine fountain pen is the channel for that. The greatest books in many languages were handwritten in ink, with dip pens or other cultural equivalents. Do I understand correctly that many schools no longer teach young students cursive handwriting? Everyone will print if they have to write by hand? And the Navy communications people no longer learn Morse Code. Progress?

 

[PaulTheScandinavian]

Fine pens and the penmanship that goes with them are an inspiration and a sensual treat. For actually drafting writing, lists and written material of all kinds, I get shouldered over to specific brands of (groan) ballpoints or the occasional gel pen, just to grab and write. Sharpies too have a kind of lurid attraction. But if you want to know what real written communications should be, a fine fountain pen is the channel for that. The greatest books in many languages were handwritten in ink, with dip pens or other cultural equivalents. Do I understand correctly that many schools no longer teach young students cursive handwriting? Everyone will print if they have to write by hand? And the Navy communications people no longer learn Morse Code. Progress?

an Absolute true Sir

 

[olkofri]

Do I understand correctly that many schools no longer teach young students cursive handwriting? Everyone will print if they have to write by hand? And the Navy communications people no longer learn Morse Code. Progress?

Regress.

I had to learn cursive handwritting in elementary. They taught nothing else. Printing was forbidden. All assignments had to be handed in in cursive or they were not accepted. My cursive was ugly as heck, in spite of all of those caligraphy (cloud and rain) exercises, both from school and the additional ones my father made me do. In high school the stance softened, we could use cursive or block, teachers didn't care as long as it was legible. I wanted to switch, but I had the hardest time getting up to speed with block; in cursive my hand flew. Eventually, I managed to become efficient and proficient in block and said farewell to cursive.

Funny thing is, nowadays I write in Sütterlin; and I'm glad that one isn't taught anymore: my writings remain private.

 

[Bowie]

Do I understand correctly that many schools no longer teach young students cursive handwriting?

Yes, true. My nieces attend(ed) a public school in Florida. One is in middle school, one is now in college. Not only do they not learn how to write in cursive, they cannot read it either. Their father has to read aloud cards and thank you notes from family members, particularly grandma.

 

[burleyboy]

This is horrible news! I've heard similar things, too, but could hardly believe.

 

[olkofri]

Why write when you can type tap, eh?

 

[renfield]

I’ve encountered the cursive as cryptography in public. Funny as hell, in my opinion. You can’t even read your own language? How embarrassing for you.

 

[f5rd2hy]

cursive writing, drivers education.

 

[peregrinus]

Do I understand correctly that many schools no longer teach young students cursive handwriting?

The Common Core standards adopted in the US In 2010 dropped requirements that cursive writing be taught in public elementary schools. This “spelled” the end of the cursive writing style because it was nor longer a requirement and so was no longer budgeted for. Since then, a number of individual states and districts have reinstated cursive but this is a patchwork. However, in reality it had been dropped from most curriculums a number of years earlier and the adoption of Common Core just made it official.

 

[peregrinus]

One is in middle school, one is now in college.

Very true. At work I use fountain pens and so, now identified as a relic from a previous epoch, I have been asked to “translate” cursive by mid-twenty year old college business graduates. I am not sure if this makes me happy or sad. Maybe both.

 

[peregrinus]

Everyone will print if they have to write by hand?

Well it’s more complicated because many younger individuals cannot simply print either.
At work what I see is a hybrid script consisting of part cursive, block printing then mixed with emojis and social media symbols.
A new written language is developing, at least on street level communication.