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Fountain pens and ink?

Another pen question! I have been experimenting with rollerball type pens and I just cannot settle with them. I have a terrible tendancy to squeeze my pens and place too much pressure on the paper, and anything that encourages me to do that is out. So I have decided to experiment with fountain pens.

The first major stumbling block I have is being left-handed. That means I am likely to encounter issues with writing angle and with smudging. However, at least I know that fountain pens require much less pressure to write with, so I am willing to give a few a go. So far, I have unearthed an old fountain pen of mine and some even older ink. After a bit of a clean, it is writing fairly well and, as long as I keep my wrist rotated, I can write legibly without smudging everything. The main problem is that the profile of the pen, where the cap fits, requires me to hold it a bit too close to the nib, which pulls my posture in and brings my hand round to smudging territory. Its still nice to write with, though.

I am now on the lookout for fountain pens that write well at different angles, and that are not averse to being pushed across the page by left-handers. I am also hoping that fountain pen inks may have improved over the past 20 years (yes, the last time I dabbled with fountain pens was when I was a teenager).

Do any of you have any suggestions?

David

TOPICS: Lofi
Flexiblefine's picture

Pens for Dummies/Beginners

michaelramm wrote:
Could someone post a Fountain Pens for Dummies post for those of us that might be interested in getting their first FP? Or point me in the direction of a good site to answer my questions (nibs, refills, iink choices, cartridges, etc).

I'm supposed to be putting something like that together for another site, but I've been too swamped to get to it. I could probably go on for a whole series of articles about pen stuff, and I'm not remotely an expert.

Typical suggestions for beginners include the Waterman Phileas, the Lamy Safari and variations (the Al-Star is just a Safari with an aluminum body), anything by Pelikan, or maybe the Aurora Idea.

If you don't have pen stores handy, you might want to stick with pens you can find cartridges for, which doesn't mean you're completely out of luck -- many brands' cartridge pens (Pelikan, Waterman, Mont Blanc, etc.) take the "international" cartridge. Many other brands use their own proprietary cartridges (Sheaffer, Parker, Lamy, Cross, etc.), but you can occasionally find crossovers -- I think Parker and Aurora cartridges exchange at least one way.

To get a grasp on pricing, you might start at pencity.com, where they list their fountain pens in price categories. Once you pick a few pens you might be interested in, you can comparison-shop. Check out pen dealers' closeouts, too. Just because something is discontinued doesn't mean it's bad at all.

For link-overload about pens, try http://www.penhero.com/PenBookmarks.htm

 
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