My other fandom is pens and inks

[fufaraw]

I am not a conscientous pen owner. I spent a good portion of yesterday soaking nibs and flushing fillers and reservoirs on some of my pens. I always have the Pollyanna-ish approach, "Let's fill the pens with gorgeous colors, and then we'll use them all regularly!"  That trick never works. I get distracted and wander off, and weeks (months) later, the feeds have dried up and clogged, and the ink in the reservoirs has at least partially evaporated and gone a bit gummy, and it's time to soak and empty, flush and fill until the water flushes clear, and then let the pens dry. I seem unable to fill *one* or maybe two pens, and use them consistently until the ink is gone.

So this batch is clean and gleaming, and I'm all sparkly-eyed and ready to "Fill ALL the Pens!" I have some new inks I'm dying to try. Of course (if you're slightly obsessive like me), the ink color should match the barrel color, except in the instance of a very fine, dry-writing pen and a pale ink--the result of that is just a misery to try and read. In that case, I try to find a better match: a darker ink for the fine writer, a broader, wetter nib for the pale ink.

The pens I'm dealing with at the moment are: The afforementioned vintage carmine stripe Sheaffer and the Pelikan 400 tortoise stripe, the black and pearl Parker duofold, the Waterford Marquis Arista, which looks like caramel candy with swirls of vanilla, the Parker Sonnets; Firedance--crimson embers glowing through the coals of a fire, and Ambre--red sparks swirling through clouds of bronze and gold glitter. There's the Parker Frontier, with the purple/teal colorchange barrel, and the Sheaffer Balance II, Aspen-- chunks of glowing blue, amber, and gold.

In school, pre-computer, my fountain pen ink color choices were blue or black, and I still almost never use blue, and black only slightly more frequently. My go-to color is brown. I've used it for signatures on letterhead and forms, on certificates and awards, as well as for notes and letters. It's a standard for me, the way black and blue are for others.

The Pelikan gets black--the question is, which? Namiki, Montblanc, Levenger, Iroshizuku, Sheaffer, Hero, or Pilot? Dad's Sheaffer usually gets brown, as does the Duofold, because the journal I'm using is a leather wrap and tie, and brown has a suitably antiquated look, especially the J. Herbin Lie de the, which is a watery sepia with olive tones. It looks exactly like black ink faded over time. And though the Duofold's nib is a nail, it writes best of all my pens on the journal's parchment pages. There's also the Sailor brown ink, which is quite nice, and which will probably go in Dad's pen, though the Sheaffer nib is flexy and shows off Lie de the's shading.

The Sonnets get Noodler's shading inks--in the Ambre, Dragon's Napalm, a fire-orange that's scarlet at the heart of a heavy line, shading to translucent orange at the edges. Firedance gets Black Swan in Australian Roses--near-black at the heart, shading to watery damson on the edges. The Sonnet nib is flexy enough to take advantage of the shading.

For someone who doesn't use blue very often, I've accumulated a wealth of blue inks, so I've decided to switch the Sheaffer Aspen from ubiquitous brown to blue. Now it's just a matter of *which* blue--the vintage Pelikan tinte, or the new Pelikan Edelstein Topaz? Iroshizuku tsuki-yo, asa-gao, kon-peki, or the Caran D'ache's Blue Night? Turquoise range, with the Caran D'ache Caribbean Sea or the Visconti turquoise? "I don't use blue." !!

The Frontier gets purple ink, rather than teal, and the choices are the washy, shading J. Herbin's Violette Pensee, Or the Omas clear and stable Violet. Both are pretty. 


And the Waterford has been inked from the beginning with J. Herbin's Orange Indien. I think I'll keep it.

So tomorrow I fill the pens, and then tackle cleaning the ones in the pen pot: the red pearl marbled and grey pearl marbled celluloid Parkettes, the blue-striped and grey striped celluloid Esterbrooks, the green-barreled Reform with the black cap, the Parker vacuumatic. And next it will be the Watermans: red, green, and blue Phileases and the blue Laureate, then the burgundy and turquoise barreled Parker 45s, and the Sheaffer No Nonsense pens. I'll probably ink two or three among all of those. The rest will stay clean.

At least for now.

Comments

[roxymissrose.livejournal.com]

Lovely! It's so nice to read about what a person loves. Plus, I had no idea there was so much to pens--I spent my formative years just counting it good if I didn't die the side of my hand blue or black. ;)

[fufaraw]

Hee! Well, now you can dye your hand purple! Or brown! Or bright green or orange!

Just FYI (ask me how I learned), when you've just had a slight accident filling your pen, and you'll be shaking hands with a visiting dignitary in twenty minutes, it's nice to know that a scrub with toothpaste, a thorough application of hand cream followed by more toothpaste and finally soap and water removes most noticeable traces. Plus, minty handshake!

[meus_venator]

Oh lovely! Look at those pens, and the boxes and bottles aren't too shabby either. I love nice penmanship and brown is a great choice for ink colour. I had a summer job doing calligraphy one year and I have to say by the end of the summer I was quite good, but it's a skill quickly lost if not practiced. I always admire in movies when they show someone's writing and it's all beautiful and fancy. What a great collection!

[fufaraw]

Thanks! I really did have nice handwriting, with all that daily practice. Unfortunately, it's deteriorated, the more time I spend at the keyboard.

I love calligraphy! I always wanted to study more styles than the simple, basic one I learned. So elegant.

[jimbobjoe.livejournal.com]

I did not understand much of this, especially all the names, or how I would go about doing something like this, but all the same, this post makes me happy. PENS ARE AWESOME.

[fufaraw]

So, this is probably more than you want to know, but if you're interested in fountain pens, I can't recommend highly enough the Goulet Pens info vids. They'll tell you a lot about today's fountain pens, and currently available inks.

I started with Sheaffer's school pens and cartridges (click through pictures), progressed to
Sheaffer No Nonsense pens. At the time, I was unaware of converter fillers, but I cajoled a used, needle-less syringe from my cat's vet, and used it to refill cartridges with bottled ink, eliminating throwaway cartridges and spending money on new ones. Adults used lever-fill fountain pens, and when I first started collecting vintage fountain pens, they were what I thought of as "real pens." Here's a YouTube link on a series of care and feeding vids for lever-fill pens. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cleaning+and+filling+lever-fill+fountain+pen You can find lever fill, and vintage pens with other types of fillers at flea markets, yard sales and, of course, on ebay for very little money. Sometimes they might need a little repair or refurbishing, but even adding in those costs, a vintage pen can serve you well for very little money. Most of my pens have been acquired this way, other than  my dad's lever-fill Sheaffer, my mom's Parker Vacuumatic, and my husband's piston-fill Pelikan.

When my husband bought me my first "real" fountain pen, a Parker 45, it came with both cartridges and converter, and I never used cartridges again. I discovered twist-piston filling converters, and have always subbed them for the pinch-type converters, which a lot of pens came with, since you can see the ink level in them, unlike the metal-housed pinch fill ones.

Today's fountain pens almost all come with twist-fill piston converters, and I've replaced cartridges and pinch-converters in every pen that will accept a converter. My Sheaffer Connaisseur, released by Levenger as the "Mediterranean" of its "Seas" series, has a solid block at the end of the barrel, which shortens the space and makes a twist converter unusable. The rest of the pinch converters have been replaced.

As I said, more than you wanted to know, I'm sure. But maybe you'll find some of the links interesting, or helpful, if you decide to fall willy-nilly into the wonderful world of fountain pens.

[jimbobjoe.livejournal.com]

Wow, that WAS interesting. Sadly, I have no patience for such things. My husband and I often participate in dessert auctions for charity, and he always pokes fun at me for not wanting to do anything with fussy decorations. I don't do well with fussy!

However, these pens are lovely. I do have a thing for pens of all kinds, so you have definitely fed my "pen porn" needs for the week. :)

[aerynsun5.livejournal.com]

I will always remember you for your pens. Also, your adorable eccentricities, like matching pen to ink. You make me so happy.