8 ms·

Mountain of Ink

125 points by neilfrndes 1y ago

charleshan 1y ago
I came across the website a few months ago and bought my first fountain pen and two of the top recommend inks from the site. Black: Sailor Jentle Black Blue Black: Sailor Sei-boku
- Brajeshwar 1y ago
  You will like “Carbon Black CHOU Kuro.” It is, I think, currently the father of all Black Inks. If you wish to read up, here is an article I found searching — it compares Chou Kuro’s Platinum against the Carbon Black. https://www.penchalet.com/blog/platinum-chou-kuro-vs-carbon-black-ink-blackest-of-black-ink-comparison/ https://www.penchalet.com/blog/platinum-chou-kuro-vs-carbon-...
  - quantummagic 1y ago
    Don't know how much weight to attribute to a sole review, but it was a 1 star: https://www.amazon.ca/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0C9Z3W8C6 https://www.amazon.ca/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0...
    - Brajeshwar 1y ago
      Well, 40 other reviews seem to like it more to be giving it 4+ stars. https://www.amazon.com/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0C9Z3W8C6/ https://www.amazon.com/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B...
calmbonsai 1y ago
In the states, Goulet Pens is a wonderful niche retailer of inks and fountain pens. https://www.gouletpens.com/ https://www.gouletpens.com/
- throwanem 1y ago
  Strong recommend. Brian's a friendly and diligent guy, always ready to help research and solve customer problems. The only fountain pens I don't get from Goulet Pens are the ones they don't sell.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    Once I bought something from them and they shipped it here, overseas. The packaging arrived perfectly. I really wish them all the best. If you talk with him, and if you can relay this, I'd be glad.
    - throwanem 1y ago
      We're not quite that close, sad to say; for the most part I'm just a very happy customer, and past that we once collaborated via email to find and source a suitable replacement part for my Decimo, when it extruded its body joint o-ring a few years back. But I'm sure he'd be glad to hear from you!
- glitchc 1y ago
  I've been buying from Goulet for years, but lately their service has taken a major nosedive. I recommend people stay away from them now. The last pen I received from them was broken. They would not take it back, asked me to deal with the manufacturer directly. Horrible customer service. After so many expensive pens (Pelikan, Pilot and Visconti), I won't be buying from them again.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    Which pen?
    - glitchc 1y ago
      It was a Visconti Opera Master. Comes with a power reservoir filler that detached from the nib assembly within five days of purchase. Turned out the threads were completely mismatched, that pen should have never been sold. Now, granted Visconti has serious QC issues, but this was a limited edition and not only did Goulet fail to catch the issue during testing but they also refused to do anything about it except refer me to the manufacturer. I ended up fixing the pen myself. It works well now, but after that experience, I am done with Goulet.
qwertox 1y ago
One could frame each image and display them all in an art gallery.
ergonaught 1y ago
I have a shelf full of bottles of ink I wouldn't have bought if the site had existed (and/or I had known about it sooner, since that spans years). They've prevented many similar wasted purchases, and guided several delighted purchases. Very useful!
systemswizard 1y ago
The ads are so obtrusive and overtly excessive in page coverage. Also one of your ad providers are redirecting to “Microsoft support”
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  Blissfully ad free with Firefox and uBlock Origin. If ads annoy you, I would suggest fixing your browser.
  - ch_123 1y ago
    Even the neutered uBlock Origin Lite on Chrome is enough to make the ads go away.
Brajeshwar 1y ago
For Fountain Pens, I stumbled on a YouTube Channel, Hemingway Jones that has some great videos about them. https://www.youtube.com/@HemingwayJones https://www.youtube.com/@HemingwayJones Of course, all things Stationery, I occasionally continue to watch JetPens. Unfortunately, for my liking, they seem to be more and more Kawaii. https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens
- bayindirh 1y ago
  You can also look at Figboot on Pens: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1aF4MNqSzKIS2t0KHS1gw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1aF4MNqSzKIS2t0KHS1gw He's a nice guy.
quirino 1y ago
I had some fountain pens over the years, but I was never able to truly enjoy them or recommend them to anyone. I didn't find them practical as daily writing tools and or too fun as a hobby. I really dislike the feeling that you need to be a bit careful with a tool. I want the peace of mind of being able to drop pens nib-first into the ground. They're also not great for writing on many types of paper and require some care and maintenance. My experience getting into double-edge razors/nice shaving soaps was much better. They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way. (On the pen front, today I'm very satisfied with my "Kaweco LILIPUT Ball Pen Stainless Steel" - it's super compact, has a nice weight to it and just feels well-constructed and solid. I hope to use it for many years to come. (If you want to get one, beware the Aluminium version, which looks identical but is noticeably lighter))
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > My experience getting into double-edge razors It’s called safety razor, if I understood you correctly. Also, it’s quite hard to write with it, I’ll stick to fountain pens.
  - badgersnake 1y ago
    If you like to write your ransom notes in blood it’s just the thing.
    - throwanem 1y ago
      Eh. I think I see where you're going but that spacing is really hard to get right and it would clog like nobody's business, you're better off just going with regular ink in the 6mm Parallel.
- innocenat 1y ago
  > They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way. Most of us who use fountain pen feel this way too. I literally just an hour ago tried picking up a gel pen for writing and 3 minutes later it went back into storage. It's Uniball One so it's not a bad gel pen either.
kennyloginz 1y ago
Mountain of ads.
- mmzeeman 1y ago
  True. When I mentioned this on an FP Discord, people actively shared tips about content blockers.
user_7832 1y ago
For anyone wanting to know and learn more, there's also the r/fountainpens subreddit with 350k subs (because of course there exists a subreddit for every such niche).
- throwanem 1y ago
  It's a good place to get a sense of the hobby's breadth, as people post hauls of freshly bought pens and ink they'll never use. As with all else on Reddit, you're wise not to stay long.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Also there is Fountain Pen Network. (https://www.fountainpennetwork.com https://www.fountainpennetwork.com)
  - user_7832 1y ago
    Thanks!
st-msl 1y ago
Amazing — this is what I'm here for!
agambrahma 1y ago
I think people over-complicate fountain pens a lot. I have a Lamy Safari that I got in 2012 and works just as well today. It's what I still recommend to anyone who asks what to get. Just get the pen, with its cartridge, add more cartridges -- you can stay here and already you're way better than with most standard ball pens that you'd be using otherwise. Then, get the small converter, plop it in, get your first bottle of ink -- and again you can stay here and enjoy your pen-and-ink experience for a long long time. Now if you want to try a few different inks, do that next. Maybe get a second pen, see whether 'fine' or 'medium' sized nibs is more your thing. Go further than that if you want, but you don't have to. Either way, that first step is enough to improve your life a lot
- bayindirh 1y ago
  As a person who's at the other end of the spectrum, I don't think it's complicating the matter unnecessarily causing us to fall into the rabbit hole. Many people like to write also like to write with fountain pens a lot, hence we go exploring. Collecting pens, inks and paper. I carry three pens. Three colors, three widths, three manufacturers (it's not a rule, but my current rotation is like that). What I currently have is a result of my own curiosity, and I would do the same if I have started over.
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  I sort of agree but I would say either get a cartridge pen or a refillable pen and leave it at that. Pick an ink and use it until it is gone. Don't get a second pen unless you actually have a need for a second pen. There are few things in modern life which are lifetime buys and you can use every day of your life, a good pen is one of them, enjoy it instead of feeding into the endless search for something better. 99% of what I have written for the past ~decade has been with one pen, it is an old friend at this point. I picked my ink by it being a reputable brand and sold in bottles big enough that it would last years, and when it was time to order another bottle I had to pull it out to check what it was so I could order another because I had forgotten what it was. I am sure there are better pens and better inks but I have no real issues with what I have and anything else will be lacking in something more important than the supposed benefits offered by those better pens and inks.
bayindirh 1y ago
If anyone wants get into the rabbit hole of fountain pens and related items a little deeper, they should check Galen Leather: https://www.galenleather.com https://www.galenleather.com
Pinus 1y ago
Handwriting seems to be becoming more and more of a niche phenomenon, actually paying attention to what one writes with even more so, and actually using fountain pens yet more so. Still, there seems to be an absurd number of ink makers around, producing an absurd number of inks. I suppose dyes and water are relatively cheap, and can be mixed in buckets...
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  A good number of the inks are because of artists, hence the wide variety of colors including colors which are not particularly useful for writing. The water based inks used in fountain pens are the primary inks for pen and ink drawing because they allow all of the classic techniques like washes and water brushes which do not work with other sorts of inks. Many of the makers of these inks have started to exploit the fountain pen fad to expand their market.
  - munificent 1y ago
    > A good number of the inks are because of artists I actually think you have it backwards. Hobbyists drive the economics of almost all gear used for creative pursuits. For every artist making meaningful objects and sharing them with the world, there are a 100 dabblers who fantasize about being that, buy a bunch of stuff, but never really use it. This is a strange but ultimately harmonious economic arrangement. Hobbyists increase scale, which helps gear producers lower costs, which benefit actual artists.
    - ofalkaed 1y ago
      I did not say "professional artists," I said "artists" which includes the dabblers with the dreams of becoming professional artists but does not include pen collectors with a cabinet full of ink whose lifetime of ink purchases might reach the yearly ink purchase of anyone remotely serious about their art.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  As a person who writes a lot, "seems" is the important word here. In IT circles, computers and tablets are the most coveted tools for note taking due to processing flexibility it provides, but while less visible, writing is there, evolving. From personal experience, writing with pen and paper unlocks a different mode in brain. Personally, I can concentrate better, think deeper and clearer, hence I work with pen and paper a lot, incl. software/architecture/algorithm design, free-form thinking while working on other things. I keep "lab notebooks" for software I develop. I also keep a hand-written diary, which again feels and affects very differently when compared to writing to a text document on screen. There's another sub-culture who writes for the sake of writing (people generally transcribe books by hand). I don't judge them, but that's not my taste. Some writing inks are very cheap (Pelikan 4001 / Lamy Standard / Parker / Waterman comes to my mind), but some pigments and dyes are very expensive and inks are produced in limited quantities. Companies like Noodler's produce very interesting chemistries and try to keep their costs low to provide the most ink for the buck, but they also make some exotic inks. It's not uncommon to ask a producer why an ink is not produced anymore, and getting "they don't make the dyes anymore, we got their all stock they produced for the last couple of years" as an answer. So, tl;dr: Writing has evolved, but it's not going anywhere soon. Some of us are writing a ton, with purpose and intent. And no, some inks are not cheap, but "standard issue" inks are optimized for cost and performance, and they are very good inks, indeed. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
voidUpdate 1y ago
While the colours and such do look very nice, the "writing samples" images show exactly why I hate using fountain pens. I'm left-handed, so if I try to write prose then my hand will just smudge the writing. I've always found that cheap ballpoints are the least likely to smudge, even if they still leave residue on my hand, and as the pen gets more "premium", the worse the smudging problem gets. I like to use as fine a pen as possible if I'm just trying to work something out (diagrams, small notes, etc), and I've found that a Unipin Fine Line (currently a 0.03) does work well, though I've been having some issues with ink flow recently (though the pen is probably nearing the end of its life at this point anyway). I have liked the feel of Uniball Eye pens in the past, though they have a similar smudging problem if used for prose. Other than that, the cheapest Bic ballpoints have been the most successful for me, since the ink dries super fast and they feel good enough to write with. In school I was given a specific left handed fountain pen to write with, but I always had to write at wonky angles to try and keep it legible, and it never really worked very well anyway. Pushing the pen instead of pulling it generally gives bad results. I have experimented with trying to do mirror writing, like Leonardo da Vinci, but obviously nobody else can read it like that
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
  As a fountain pen enthusiast with some beautiful pens that will probably become rare in the future, it makes me somewhat sad that my only son is left-handed.
  - uncircle 1y ago
    Hoping not to be culturally-deaf, you have an arabic sounding username, so maybe there is still hope for him if he decides to learn the language
    - skrebbel 1y ago
      FYI Al-Khwarizmi was a famous Persian mathematician from the Islamic Golden Age. The word "algorithm" is derived from his name.
  - 1y ago
cropher 1y ago
When it comes to fountain pens and inks, I went down a rabbit hole more than once in the past. Noodlers makes some unique pens and inks. I have a Noodlers Ahab, for example, that has a very flexible nib. Different than any of the more conventional pens I used before. But one thing that bothers me about fountain pens is that they are messy. Some of it can be avoided. You don't need a piston filler to dip into your special ink bottle to refill your pen if you don't mind using regular cartridges. But one thing that seems unavoidable is that the "section" (the part where you hold the pen) gets messy when you put the cap on it. I wonder why every fountain pen seems to have this design. One would think that a smaller cap that only covers the nib would suffice. I wonder if there are fountain pens like this. I feel another rabbit hole calling.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  How do you carry your pens? Do you fly with them a lot?
  - cropher 1y ago
    Not at all. But it seems that the inside of the caps gets messy anyway. Probably from the nib making contact when capping.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      Sometimes fountain pens "spit". This happens more frequently if the ink is low, the pressure changes or the pen get rocked a bit more than their liking. Carrying pens nib up, in a pocket or bag helps. Also some pens are more resistant to this. From my experience Lamy, Faber Castell and Kaweco makes most spit-resistant and accessible pens. I can recommend Lamy Safari, Kaweco Perkeo or Faber Castell Grip 2011 (basically a Perkeo in a different shell), if you want to explore further. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.
      - cropher 1y ago
        Thanks for the advice! I think another reason for messy fingers is the way I hold the pen. It's easy to come into contact with the nib or the exposed part of the feed when you're not careful. I might just be a bit clumsy. :)
cosiiine 1y ago
I am a fountain pen convert myself, and use them almost exclusively these days for my algorithmic plotter art. This website is a fantastic resource that I’ve referred to countless times. I’ve even written my take on why they’re such great devices for machine art: https://lostpixels.io/writings/fountain-pens-plotters https://lostpixels.io/writings/fountain-pens-plotters
- lagniappe 1y ago
  I see you were bit by the Iroshizuku bug

125 points by neilfrndes 1y ago

I came across the website a few months ago and bought my first fountain pen and two of the top recommend inks from the site. Black: Sailor Jentle Black Blue Black: Sailor Sei-boku

Brajeshwar 1y ago
You will like “Carbon Black CHOU Kuro.” It is, I think, currently the father of all Black Inks. If you wish to read up, here is an article I found searching — it compares Chou Kuro’s Platinum against the Carbon Black. https://www.penchalet.com/blog/platinum-chou-kuro-vs-carbon-black-ink-blackest-of-black-ink-comparison/ https://www.penchalet.com/blog/platinum-chou-kuro-vs-carbon-...
- quantummagic 1y ago
  Don't know how much weight to attribute to a sole review, but it was a 1 star: https://www.amazon.ca/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0C9Z3W8C6 https://www.amazon.ca/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0...
  - Brajeshwar 1y ago
    Well, 40 other reviews seem to like it more to be giving it 4+ stars. https://www.amazon.com/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B0C9Z3W8C6/ https://www.amazon.com/PLATINUM-Ink-Bottle-Carbon-Black/dp/B...

calmbonsai 1y ago

In the states, Goulet Pens is a wonderful niche retailer of inks and fountain pens. https://www.gouletpens.com/ https://www.gouletpens.com/

throwanem 1y ago
Strong recommend. Brian's a friendly and diligent guy, always ready to help research and solve customer problems. The only fountain pens I don't get from Goulet Pens are the ones they don't sell.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Once I bought something from them and they shipped it here, overseas. The packaging arrived perfectly. I really wish them all the best. If you talk with him, and if you can relay this, I'd be glad.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    We're not quite that close, sad to say; for the most part I'm just a very happy customer, and past that we once collaborated via email to find and source a suitable replacement part for my Decimo, when it extruded its body joint o-ring a few years back. But I'm sure he'd be glad to hear from you!
glitchc 1y ago
I've been buying from Goulet for years, but lately their service has taken a major nosedive. I recommend people stay away from them now. The last pen I received from them was broken. They would not take it back, asked me to deal with the manufacturer directly. Horrible customer service. After so many expensive pens (Pelikan, Pilot and Visconti), I won't be buying from them again.
- throwanem 1y ago
  Which pen?
  - glitchc 1y ago
    It was a Visconti Opera Master. Comes with a power reservoir filler that detached from the nib assembly within five days of purchase. Turned out the threads were completely mismatched, that pen should have never been sold. Now, granted Visconti has serious QC issues, but this was a limited edition and not only did Goulet fail to catch the issue during testing but they also refused to do anything about it except refer me to the manufacturer. I ended up fixing the pen myself. It works well now, but after that experience, I am done with Goulet.

qwertox 1y ago

One could frame each image and display them all in an art gallery.

ergonaught 1y ago

I have a shelf full of bottles of ink I wouldn't have bought if the site had existed (and/or I had known about it sooner, since that spans years). They've prevented many similar wasted purchases, and guided several delighted purchases. Very useful!

systemswizard 1y ago

The ads are so obtrusive and overtly excessive in page coverage. Also one of your ad providers are redirecting to “Microsoft support”

jillesvangurp 1y ago
Blissfully ad free with Firefox and uBlock Origin. If ads annoy you, I would suggest fixing your browser.
- ch_123 1y ago
  Even the neutered uBlock Origin Lite on Chrome is enough to make the ads go away.

Brajeshwar 1y ago

For Fountain Pens, I stumbled on a YouTube Channel, Hemingway Jones that has some great videos about them. https://www.youtube.com/@HemingwayJones https://www.youtube.com/@HemingwayJones Of course, all things Stationery, I occasionally continue to watch JetPens. Unfortunately, for my liking, they seem to be more and more Kawaii. https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens https://www.youtube.com/@JetPens

bayindirh 1y ago
You can also look at Figboot on Pens: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1aF4MNqSzKIS2t0KHS1gw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1aF4MNqSzKIS2t0KHS1gw He's a nice guy.

quirino 1y ago

I had some fountain pens over the years, but I was never able to truly enjoy them or recommend them to anyone. I didn't find them practical as daily writing tools and or too fun as a hobby. I really dislike the feeling that you need to be a bit careful with a tool. I want the peace of mind of being able to drop pens nib-first into the ground. They're also not great for writing on many types of paper and require some care and maintenance. My experience getting into double-edge razors/nice shaving soaps was much better. They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way. (On the pen front, today I'm very satisfied with my "Kaweco LILIPUT Ball Pen Stainless Steel" - it's super compact, has a nice weight to it and just feels well-constructed and solid. I hope to use it for many years to come. (If you want to get one, beware the Aluminium version, which looks identical but is noticeably lighter))

wiseowise 1y ago
> My experience getting into double-edge razors It’s called safety razor, if I understood you correctly. Also, it’s quite hard to write with it, I’ll stick to fountain pens.
- badgersnake 1y ago
  If you like to write your ransom notes in blood it’s just the thing.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    Eh. I think I see where you're going but that spacing is really hard to get right and it would clog like nobody's business, you're better off just going with regular ink in the 6mm Parallel.
innocenat 1y ago
> They're not just small luxuries, but actually better-performant and more practical than the popular alternatives in almost every way. Most of us who use fountain pen feel this way too. I literally just an hour ago tried picking up a gel pen for writing and 3 minutes later it went back into storage. It's Uniball One so it's not a bad gel pen either.

kennyloginz 1y ago

Mountain of ads.

mmzeeman 1y ago
True. When I mentioned this on an FP Discord, people actively shared tips about content blockers.

user_7832 1y ago

For anyone wanting to know and learn more, there's also the r/fountainpens subreddit with 350k subs (because of course there exists a subreddit for every such niche).

throwanem 1y ago
It's a good place to get a sense of the hobby's breadth, as people post hauls of freshly bought pens and ink they'll never use. As with all else on Reddit, you're wise not to stay long.
bayindirh 1y ago
Also there is Fountain Pen Network. (https://www.fountainpennetwork.com https://www.fountainpennetwork.com)
- user_7832 1y ago
  Thanks!

st-msl 1y ago

Amazing — this is what I'm here for!

agambrahma 1y ago

I think people over-complicate fountain pens a lot. I have a Lamy Safari that I got in 2012 and works just as well today. It's what I still recommend to anyone who asks what to get. Just get the pen, with its cartridge, add more cartridges -- you can stay here and already you're way better than with most standard ball pens that you'd be using otherwise. Then, get the small converter, plop it in, get your first bottle of ink -- and again you can stay here and enjoy your pen-and-ink experience for a long long time. Now if you want to try a few different inks, do that next. Maybe get a second pen, see whether 'fine' or 'medium' sized nibs is more your thing. Go further than that if you want, but you don't have to. Either way, that first step is enough to improve your life a lot

bayindirh 1y ago
As a person who's at the other end of the spectrum, I don't think it's complicating the matter unnecessarily causing us to fall into the rabbit hole. Many people like to write also like to write with fountain pens a lot, hence we go exploring. Collecting pens, inks and paper. I carry three pens. Three colors, three widths, three manufacturers (it's not a rule, but my current rotation is like that). What I currently have is a result of my own curiosity, and I would do the same if I have started over.
ofalkaed 1y ago
I sort of agree but I would say either get a cartridge pen or a refillable pen and leave it at that. Pick an ink and use it until it is gone. Don't get a second pen unless you actually have a need for a second pen. There are few things in modern life which are lifetime buys and you can use every day of your life, a good pen is one of them, enjoy it instead of feeding into the endless search for something better. 99% of what I have written for the past ~decade has been with one pen, it is an old friend at this point. I picked my ink by it being a reputable brand and sold in bottles big enough that it would last years, and when it was time to order another bottle I had to pull it out to check what it was so I could order another because I had forgotten what it was. I am sure there are better pens and better inks but I have no real issues with what I have and anything else will be lacking in something more important than the supposed benefits offered by those better pens and inks.

bayindirh 1y ago

If anyone wants get into the rabbit hole of fountain pens and related items a little deeper, they should check Galen Leather: https://www.galenleather.com https://www.galenleather.com

Pinus 1y ago

Handwriting seems to be becoming more and more of a niche phenomenon, actually paying attention to what one writes with even more so, and actually using fountain pens yet more so. Still, there seems to be an absurd number of ink makers around, producing an absurd number of inks. I suppose dyes and water are relatively cheap, and can be mixed in buckets...

ofalkaed 1y ago
A good number of the inks are because of artists, hence the wide variety of colors including colors which are not particularly useful for writing. The water based inks used in fountain pens are the primary inks for pen and ink drawing because they allow all of the classic techniques like washes and water brushes which do not work with other sorts of inks. Many of the makers of these inks have started to exploit the fountain pen fad to expand their market.
- munificent 1y ago
  > A good number of the inks are because of artists I actually think you have it backwards. Hobbyists drive the economics of almost all gear used for creative pursuits. For every artist making meaningful objects and sharing them with the world, there are a 100 dabblers who fantasize about being that, buy a bunch of stuff, but never really use it. This is a strange but ultimately harmonious economic arrangement. Hobbyists increase scale, which helps gear producers lower costs, which benefit actual artists.
  - ofalkaed 1y ago
    I did not say "professional artists," I said "artists" which includes the dabblers with the dreams of becoming professional artists but does not include pen collectors with a cabinet full of ink whose lifetime of ink purchases might reach the yearly ink purchase of anyone remotely serious about their art.
bayindirh 1y ago
As a person who writes a lot, "seems" is the important word here. In IT circles, computers and tablets are the most coveted tools for note taking due to processing flexibility it provides, but while less visible, writing is there, evolving. From personal experience, writing with pen and paper unlocks a different mode in brain. Personally, I can concentrate better, think deeper and clearer, hence I work with pen and paper a lot, incl. software/architecture/algorithm design, free-form thinking while working on other things. I keep "lab notebooks" for software I develop. I also keep a hand-written diary, which again feels and affects very differently when compared to writing to a text document on screen. There's another sub-culture who writes for the sake of writing (people generally transcribe books by hand). I don't judge them, but that's not my taste. Some writing inks are very cheap (Pelikan 4001 / Lamy Standard / Parker / Waterman comes to my mind), but some pigments and dyes are very expensive and inks are produced in limited quantities. Companies like Noodler's produce very interesting chemistries and try to keep their costs low to provide the most ink for the buck, but they also make some exotic inks. It's not uncommon to ask a producer why an ink is not produced anymore, and getting "they don't make the dyes anymore, we got their all stock they produced for the last couple of years" as an answer. So, tl;dr: Writing has evolved, but it's not going anywhere soon. Some of us are writing a ton, with purpose and intent. And no, some inks are not cheap, but "standard issue" inks are optimized for cost and performance, and they are very good inks, indeed. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.

voidUpdate 1y ago

While the colours and such do look very nice, the "writing samples" images show exactly why I hate using fountain pens. I'm left-handed, so if I try to write prose then my hand will just smudge the writing. I've always found that cheap ballpoints are the least likely to smudge, even if they still leave residue on my hand, and as the pen gets more "premium", the worse the smudging problem gets. I like to use as fine a pen as possible if I'm just trying to work something out (diagrams, small notes, etc), and I've found that a Unipin Fine Line (currently a 0.03) does work well, though I've been having some issues with ink flow recently (though the pen is probably nearing the end of its life at this point anyway). I have liked the feel of Uniball Eye pens in the past, though they have a similar smudging problem if used for prose. Other than that, the cheapest Bic ballpoints have been the most successful for me, since the ink dries super fast and they feel good enough to write with. In school I was given a specific left handed fountain pen to write with, but I always had to write at wonky angles to try and keep it legible, and it never really worked very well anyway. Pushing the pen instead of pulling it generally gives bad results. I have experimented with trying to do mirror writing, like Leonardo da Vinci, but obviously nobody else can read it like that

Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
As a fountain pen enthusiast with some beautiful pens that will probably become rare in the future, it makes me somewhat sad that my only son is left-handed.
- uncircle 1y ago
  Hoping not to be culturally-deaf, you have an arabic sounding username, so maybe there is still hope for him if he decides to learn the language
  - skrebbel 1y ago
    FYI Al-Khwarizmi was a famous Persian mathematician from the Islamic Golden Age. The word "algorithm" is derived from his name.
- 1y ago

cropher 1y ago

When it comes to fountain pens and inks, I went down a rabbit hole more than once in the past. Noodlers makes some unique pens and inks. I have a Noodlers Ahab, for example, that has a very flexible nib. Different than any of the more conventional pens I used before. But one thing that bothers me about fountain pens is that they are messy. Some of it can be avoided. You don't need a piston filler to dip into your special ink bottle to refill your pen if you don't mind using regular cartridges. But one thing that seems unavoidable is that the "section" (the part where you hold the pen) gets messy when you put the cap on it. I wonder why every fountain pen seems to have this design. One would think that a smaller cap that only covers the nib would suffice. I wonder if there are fountain pens like this. I feel another rabbit hole calling.

bayindirh 1y ago
How do you carry your pens? Do you fly with them a lot?
- cropher 1y ago
  Not at all. But it seems that the inside of the caps gets messy anyway. Probably from the nib making contact when capping.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    Sometimes fountain pens "spit". This happens more frequently if the ink is low, the pressure changes or the pen get rocked a bit more than their liking. Carrying pens nib up, in a pocket or bag helps. Also some pens are more resistant to this. From my experience Lamy, Faber Castell and Kaweco makes most spit-resistant and accessible pens. I can recommend Lamy Safari, Kaweco Perkeo or Faber Castell Grip 2011 (basically a Perkeo in a different shell), if you want to explore further. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.
    - cropher 1y ago
      Thanks for the advice! I think another reason for messy fingers is the way I hold the pen. It's easy to come into contact with the nib or the exposed part of the feed when you're not careful. I might just be a bit clumsy. :)

cosiiine 1y ago

I am a fountain pen convert myself, and use them almost exclusively these days for my algorithmic plotter art. This website is a fantastic resource that I’ve referred to countless times. I’ve even written my take on why they’re such great devices for machine art: https://lostpixels.io/writings/fountain-pens-plotters https://lostpixels.io/writings/fountain-pens-plotters

lagniappe 1y ago
I see you were bit by the Iroshizuku bug