fountain pen

by Tony Thomas It is hot outside and you know what that means: Your fountain pens will be more prone to drying out. What do you do with bone dry pens? Conventional wisdom says that you clean them out and refill them with fresh ink. But I have another, more frugal, solution. When two of my less expensive pens dried out suddenly, I just reached for a syringe and a bottle of distilled water and filled the cartridge or converter up with water. I then dipped the tip of the pens into some water and they wrote perfectly again. What you have to realize is that ink is nothing more than dye suspended in a water solution. When the water evaporates, the dye is still there in much more concentrated form. When you add water, it dilutes the dye and the pen will write again. Depending upon how much water you add and how much dye is left, it may be more or less saturated than the original color of the ink. But it will write and you will save a bit of money on ink. And, for me, that is a good

by Tony Thomas I just bought a Ranga 3 Duofold flat top from Peyton Street Pens. Although I own Ranga 3 eyedropper pen, I always wanted to get one with a Jowo nib and feed so that I could use it with a converter.   As you may or may or not know, Ranga is a pen manufacturer in India that makes unique handmade pens in ebonite and acrylic. Peyton Street Pens has a distribution agreement with Ranga and also offers several models that they designed. They offer reasonable prices and fast service.  I received my pen from PSP in a few days.  If you order direct from Ranga, you typically have to wait at least 3 weeks to receive your pen. And even though the pen is described as being orange and blue ebonite, I found that it is more of a medium brown with blue-black stripes. It is a great contrast and the color is growing on me. The fit and finish of the pen are top notch and I noticed that the breather hole that Ranga typically drilled in the cap their eyedropper pens is missing. That mea