fountain pen

by Tony Thomas I have really big hands.  As a result, I need a really big pen to write comfortably for long periods of time.  I am always searching for capable daily writers that can serve my needs.  My Edison Collier and Noodler's Ahab have served this purpose well but I wanted to add another pen to the rotation.  I looked through my growing pen collection to see what pens would be good candidates with a bit of modification.   I finally decided to use my hand made  Ranga Duofold ebonite pen from India as a starting point.  At $35 shipped, it is an unbelievable value.  The big drawbacks are the simple ebonite feed and scratchy Wality nib that ship with it.  While you can order this pen with a Jowo or Schmidt nib, a modern feed and a converter, they add quite a bit to the price.   This pen is really big: About 14.6 cm (5.75") long when capped, 13 cm long when uncapped, a 12mm section width and 14mm wide body width.  It is very comfo...

I tested Higgins Fountain Pen India and Sepia Calligraphy Ink in a few pens last year. Cheap ink and easy to find locally (at Dick Blick art store). My selections were "Fountain Pen India Ink" and "Sepia Calligraphy Ink". Both inks are listed as fountain pen safe and non-waterproof with no gum arabic. A 2.5 oz (74ml) bottle of each was $2.87. That is less than 4 cents per ml compared to around 14 cents per ml for Noodler's Black. My test pens for this ink are a Noodler's Ahab w/Goulet medium (Jowo) nib for the "Fountain Pen India" and a Chinese Baoer 388 for the "Sepia Calligraphy" ink. After filling both pens up, both seem to write fine with good flow. There don't seem to be any start up issues as of yet. I picked the Ahab and Baoer pens for this test because they are 1. Fairly cheap. 2. Easy to strip down (removable nibs and feeds) and to clean thoroughly if need be. I will see how well they work during my test phase and to s...