fountain pen

by Tony Thomas Although I adore fountain pens and use them whenever I can, I find myself using pencils more and more for practical reasons. With fountain pens, you have to worry about bleeding and feathering on cheap paper.  Not so with pencils.  They will write on just about any kind of paper including a brown paper bag.  And given the amount of cheap paper I encounter daily, that really helps! Also, when I am trying to capture thoughts and ideas on paper, pencils just seem to work better for me. With fountain pens, I have to keep capping and uncapping the pen lest it dries out after several minutes of just sitting in my hand.  That stifles my thought flow and gets really annoying. And with pencils, I always have the ability to erase mistakes.  With fountain pens, all I can do is cross things out and rewrite them, leaving an ugly mess. When I am at work, I have to jot down quick notes while talking on the phone and pencils work much better for that as well. I r...

by Tony Thomas Believe it or not, I scored a Jinhao 599 on eBay for less than $2.00 with shipping and handling from China!  I have reviewed this pen before and gave it high marks for the price.  Now, it is an even better value. Is this an anomaly?  Actually, no.  The solid color versions are pretty easy to find at that price as this goes to press (The transparent versions sell for a bit more). This has got to be the best fountain pen deal out there right now!  They look and feel very similar to the popular Lamy Safari and the nib is a smooth (if boring) Jinhao medium. I decided to break out a four way nail buffer and do some surgery on the nib to turn it into a stub.  I am not the best nib grinder in the world, but I was able to end up with a nice smooth nib in about 15 or 20 minutes.  You can clearly see the line variation between horizontal and vertical lines in the picture to the left. If you are looking for a really cheap pen (or 10) that you can c...

 by Tony Thomas The Kaweco Ice Sport is a bit overpriced (about $27). That said, it is a handy little fountain pen. Don't let its small size fool you.  It writes great and feels pretty good in the hand when capped. I wish there was a decent converter for it (there isn't) and that the optional clip was included in the price.  With the clip, it costs $30 or more and that is about the price of a Lamy Safari or two Pilot Metropolitans!  Kaweco should really consider lowering the price to less than $20 with clip. I generally use cartridges in this pen, although  I also use it as an eyedropper by putting a bit of silicone grease on the threads.  Do this with caution as the threads on the pen are fairly coarse and leaking is possible (although I have never had this problem). The Kaweco Ice Sport comes in six colors and five nib sizes, so take your pick. For a tiny pen, it doesn't get much better than this! Not exactly a fine point, more like a medium.

by Tony Thomas I participated in the Rhodia Paper Project (Week 2) at www.rhodiadrive.com . First of all, what a delightful assortment of papers from Clairefontaine! I inked up some of my favorite fountain pens and also pulled out a pencil for this test.  Pens/pencil used were: Pilot Metropolitan Fine w/Noodler's Black, TWSBI Vac 700 (.8 Nemosine Stub nib) w/Waterman Serenity Blue, Lamy Studio EF w/diluted PR Chocolat, Lamy Vista (1.1 stub) w/Noodler's Black and a Pentel Kerry Mechanical Pencil with .7 HB lead. Here are the tests: G. Lalo Verge de France (100g): This is a great slightly off-white laid-finish paper that would be great for formal correspondence.  As a result, it has a bit of texture that is only slightly uncomfortable when writing with an EF or fine nib. It accepts ink beautifully and drying time was acceptable.  No feathering observed.  The paper also performed well when I used my pencil, producing a solid, dark line.   A really great paper. Clai...

By Tony Thomas I wanted to breathe some new life into my custom Hidebound Leather planner cover, so I decided to distress it.  Distress it?  Yep! What does distressing entail?  Basically, you remove all of the contents of the cover and then wring it like a paper towel.   And then you do it again and again in various directions.  If you have the right kind of leather, it will change its color and show an incredible texture change! The top picture is of the cover shortly after I received it.  The picture below it was taken after distressing the leather.  Dramatic, indeed! I decided to also distress the cover I bought for my Clairefontaine notebooks.  It is on the left (below) and my planner is on the right.

by Tony Thomas After watching Brian Goulet's video on the new Pilot Metropolitan fine point, I decided to give one a try.  I had my eye on the White Tiger model for a while, so I bought one with a fine nib from my friends at The Goulet Pen Company . Let me say this at the outset: If you don't have a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen in your collection, get one!  At $15, it is one of the true bargains of the fountain pen world. I always add a CON-50 twist converter to my Metros, since I am not thrilled with the included CON-20 squeeze converter.  That adds a bit over $5 to the price, but to me, it is well worth it. The Metropolitan fine point is a great writer.  It produces a true Japanese fine line with just a touch of feedback.  For me, it has become a daily writer due to its low cost and great performance.  Highly recommended! A writing sample in a Clairefontaine notebook. The White Tiger hanging out  with two of my other "Metros".

by Tony Thomas I have been looking at various planners for awhile, including the highly-esteemed Filofax.  However, I am not a big fan of ring binders and prefer the Circa/Arc/Rollabind disc binders and accessories.   As a result, I decided to ditch my spartan Circa leather cover and commission the wonderful folks at  Hidebound Leather to create a nice leather planner cover for me. After consulting with them, I found that the easiest way to create such a planner was to start with a regular book cover and customize it. After carefully measuring my Circa notebook including the discs, I picked the Classic Vintage Cognac large book cover ($45) and added the Folio pocket option ($15).   Check out the link here . It took them about a week to create the cover and it arrived a few days after that.  I am very pleased with the result.  The cover is made of really soft and supple leather and, after a just a few weeks of use, it is already providing a nice, slightly d...