I was a big (cheap) fountain pen collector for a while and used them almost exclusively in school, but then I had a few jobs that didn't involve much writing and they kind of fell by the wayside. I'm still discovering pens that I left full of ink and after a few years they can really get messed up. The cheaper ones end up with nibs broken from rust, but the ones that avoid that fate get their feeds and filling systems clogged up with dry ink instead.
Now I try to have only two or three pens inked at a time because I'll forget about any more than that. I had myself a little flush-and-dry party the other night because I discovered several that I had left inked.
I can also definitely second the recommendation for a stub nib. I ground a custom one at one point and it was just perfect, nice line variation and smooth writing.
Same here, in my current job the fountain pens get very little use, maybe just a few times a month.
I discovered that my Platinum Carbon Desk pen is hands down the most resistant towards clogging and drying, even with quite dry inks. I heard the Sailor Desk pen is very similar. The nib is very fine though. So I currently keep that one with a black ink, and a glass dip pen for occasionally using some of the other fancy inks.
I have been using fountain pens exclusively for the last two years. I don't identify as an addict or a collector.
I can tell you that they are not overhyped. Fountain pens are totally worth it.
I never went too high with the price. I have multiple Pilot Metropolitans (M and F nibs), multiple Platinum Preppies, one Lamy Safari. I also have several Indian Parkers.
I can very highly recommend Pilot Metropolitan, Lamy Safari, and Platinum Preppy. You can't go wrong with them. They are also cheap enough.
With ink, just go with plain Lamy ink, or Platinum/Pilot inks. I also use Noodler's.
For lefties out there: Lamy has a lefty-based nib. If you're curious picking up a Safari might be life changing. It's so much smoother than a ballpoint. I accept smudging as a way of life though
Mentioning it just in case. There's blotting paper you can buy to dry the ink after writing. YMMV.
Source: grew up somewhere where children write with fountain pens at school. I don't remember smudging being a huge issue but it has been a while as well.
It's always interesting seeing Lamys being sold as the high end writing experience in one country and the standard pen for kids in another. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Both are equically true I guess :)
This is about smudging as a leftie, because your hand is trailing the pen if you write a LtR language like English. If you blotted every word or character before moving on you’d be there a while.
I spent 5 years of high school writing in a fountain pen as a leftie. For me, with good ink and good paper, it smudges LESS than a ballpen: the ballpen ink is thicker and takes a while to dry, so it doesn't quite smudge, but still leaves a slow-forming ink stain on the side of your hand. Fountain pen ink dries quickly and does not. However, different lefties write in different ways: I write from the bottom-ish.
You don't smudge if you learn the right writing position for lefties. Unfortunately most teachers are too ignorant to teach it in school.
I've also written the wrong way until my mid 20s and my Hand was hurting badly after some time.
Learning the right writing position was annoying for a few weeks but after that I'm writing more than ever and happily
I do a lot of long-form writing. I switched from typing first drafts to writing them and saw improvements in my creativity, organization, and general quality of writing, and also found that I finished my work faster. Then I switched from ballpoints to a fountain pen and saw what all the fuss was about. People who write a lot appreciate how smooth fountain pens are, how the well-designed fountain pens have great ergonomics that reduces hand fatigue, and how the ability to pick your ink can let you fine-tune your writing experience even more. Yes, they can be impractical, and I can absolutely see how disposable ballpoints and rollerballs eventually won the market competition (in the US at least) but modern fountain pens, for some use cases, deserve a try.
I have a few fountain pens, some were not cheap. The one I use the most is my Lamy Safari. Taking and using an expensive fountain pen outside of the house where I may lose it kinda creeps me out. That said, the Lamy is a solid, not that expensive fountain pen. ~$30.
Another Lamy Safari fan here. It’s my preferred pen amongst the others in my collection. Though, I just discovered the Lamy CP1, which feels like a sleeker version of the Safari. I’m giving the CP1 an honest go right now.
You will not be disappointed! I use a black Lamy cp1 as my "daily driver" for the last, I don't know, 35 years? I got it in school as a present and it is lying here, next to me right now. The varnish has rubbed off at the sharper edges and the metal shows. I changed the nib about 20 years ago, at the end of my academic career. Somewhere in the 2010s the small ring in the cap broke, so that it did not stay closed anymore and I had to replace it. I started out with black ink (uh edgy) but changed to blue later. I love Pelikan's 4001 Royal Blue, it is so smooth.
I also have a few other fountain pens, among them a Montblanc M146. It is crap for writing and I only bring it to put it on the table in certain meetings -- the same ones where I actually wear my Speedmaster ;)
I also think the Safari is just a very cool looking pen. I haven't really gotten into writing with fountain pens much as of yet, but I saw a Safari in a store and bought it based on looks alone.
The smoothness is night and day for me; seconds after picking up a ballpoint pen I want to reach for my FP, because with ballpoints you have to apply pressure, and even then the flow doesn’t match a fountain pen.
Have been collecting fountain pens for a good few years now (not quickly, mind, but steadily).
I annecdotally find that i remember things much more clearly when I write with them, particularly when I use varying ink colours. And when I flick back through notes seeing the colour for a topic makes it much easier to skim and recall knowledge.
To add to tge recommendation list, the Muji fountain pen is perhaps the most enjoyable pen I have, including all of my (embarrassingly) expensive pens.
I agree with the “writing it down, makes the idea more clearer and helps understand things better.” This is one of the life-lessons that I want to and try to teach my kids -- write it down, even if you are just copying, write down your thoughts -- then copying later to your digital notes is OK.
Many a lot don't appreciate the power of hand-writing with a simple pen on a paper; it is a super power.
And yes, love the Muji too. I bought a few, just in case. I think, I'm starting to collect.
My wife and I got into fountain pens recently. We're starting with the Pilot Metropolitan, since it seems like a quality pen that's not too expensive. We both like it (she's settled on a medium nib, I prefer the fine). If we get hooked we'll look at something fancier, though we're pretty happy with the pen already.
Started with the metropolitan myself, and it's definitely a good pen. I do want to add though that over time and after a few drops the snap-on cap of my pen fit less snug, and eventually the pen started dropping out of the cap and into my shirt when I had it clipped to my collar. So once that cap gets loose maybe be careful about what shirts you wear it on. That said, even after lawn-darting into the carpet nib first, my metro still writes great and I keep it around as a non-clip pen.
I think the Pilot Metropolitan caps are hit or miss. I have the fountain pen and rollerball versions and the rollerball cap was /much/ tighter so when I was using my metropolitan I used the tighter cap.
I think Pilot sells Metropolitan so cheaply on purpose, to get people into the hobby. It's still under $30 on Amazon and is a very high quality. I got one more pen (Chinese clone of Parker 51, The Original Parker) and pretty much stopped there. Some collectors have like dozens of them and dozens of different types of ink too, it's... not healthy. There's definitely some nostalgic value in writing with fountain pens but don't go overboard.
I don't think $30 is overly cheap for something like that.
There are plenty of pens available for less in countries where children are required to use them at school, starting at around $10 in the UK. Triple the price for a metal barrel, case, perhaps better manufacture etc? OK.
I mean you can certainly get a Chinese-made Parker clone for under $1 on AliExpress and it might even work fine (I have and it does). But this is Pilot, 100+ yo Japanese company making collector's pens with some high-end models going for $1000+. For them to have even under-$100 model is pretty unusual.
I do not have Lama Safari, I'm sure it's a nice pen but Pilot Metropolitan certainly feels much more expensive and a "grown-up" pen rather than just a writing implement.
ps I did not know students in the UK still are required to use fountain pens, my sincere condolences. I think teaching handwriting is important but fountain pens seem like a step too far.
Pilot MR is the metropolitan which accepts international standard cartridges instead of Pilot’s own ones. 1/2/3 is the color code or style if my memory serves right.
I EDC one, with Waterman serenity blue long cartridges. It’s a great match.
Metropolitan is a great pen with a great nib, but nothing beats a Lamy in the long run for me.
I went down the fountain pen rabbit hole a while back, at the same time I started improving my handwriting, especially cursive. It was a very nice combination of things. I was doing this with my daughter, often when she had to write her homework.
My improved handwriting has persisted (feels like I did a minor upgrade of myself) but I don’t write enough to actually continue to use fountain pens, because they’re most often dry when I want to use them. I never got expensive ones, but I did find some that I enjoyed a lot more than others. IIRC the Lamy Safari was one of my favorites.
Even though the obsession has worn off now, I still want to get a Kaweco Brass at some point.
I also used a Safari for a long time and had the same frustration of “I don’t write quite often enough and it tends to dry up”. You might want to consider a TWSBI: I bought an ECO-T a while back and that thing does not dry up, they are extremely well sealed when the cap is screwed on. I also found I like the nib better than the Lamy, but that’s more a matter of taste.
I've used fountain pens since I was about 7, as that was the expectation at school in Britain. (I think it still is, although searching a couple of British stationery shops I don't see pens covered in cartoon characters — unlike in Germany[2].) Like many children, I rebelled against this requirement for a couple of years in my teens. It is a bit unusual to go back to using a fountain pen, but I find it much more comfortable (less hand cramping?) than any other type of pen.
I used the two pens I had from around age 13 until I lost them when I was 25 or so.
I replaced them with two of very similar quality, costing €15 or so each, and marketed towards teenagers and college students [1]. They are perfectly fine. They uses the standard (cheap) refill cartridges, and I will not be particularly annoyed if I lose one.
By all means spend more if you enjoy the weight of a metal barrel, or a luxurious design, but I think there is little functional difference between a €15 pen and a €150 pen. Especially if you don't write daily.
Starting with a cheap one like this is probably a good idea if you've never used a fountain pen, or haven't used one for many years.
Thats how I went through whole primary (and possibly secondary, don't recall really) school. Fingers always having multiple dark blue spots, just like every other kid.
These pens are much better for learning to write, since you don't need to apply almost any pressure compared to ball pens. Also, we started with cursive writing, so most words could be drawn in 1 single line, again much easier and intuitive than ball pen.
I've recently started using fountain pens, the Pilot Capless (Vanishing Point) Decimo with Pilot Iroshizuku Shin-kai ink in particular. The Decimo is retractable, making it great for everyday use. My paper of choice is Rhodia R 90gsm.
It's refreshing to write with something as tactile and manual as a fountain pen when I'm surrounded by screens all day.
I find that taking notes on paper helps me with programming (debugging, code structure, etc.), and the writing experience of a fountain pen encourages me to take more notes.
I have to say: I love all of you. In principle I'd like to join the party, since I'm in sympathy with the idea.
But, but, but: I very rarely have a need to write anything by hand. I actually had to go out and buy some ballpoint pens the last time, since I wasn't bringing them home from work anymore.
When I do write anything manually, my hand hurts. And I've tried reading some of the notes I wrote 30+ years ago, and I (mostly) can't read them.
So there are practical reasons for eschewing the old ways. YMMV but it's OK if you don't care for fountain pens.
There are more chances of a new user damaging the fountain pen by bearing down on it with excess pressure than otherwise - especially if the pen has a gold nib.
Like the old saying goes, any nib can be flexed at least once.
Same man. I think fountain pens are actually very cool, but... I think I write something on paper about once a year. So unfortunately it just doesn't make sense for me to invest in a fountain pen.
For literally once a year, it's an inappropriate tool regardless of price — and a basic pen can be around €10.
The ink dries up if the pen isn't used at least semi-regularly.
(I'm surprised someone could write so little. All my software developer colleagues have a notepad and pen or pencil on their desks. I'm sure some only use them a couple of times a week, but that's a long way from once a year.)
I write a little more than once a year, because I do lots of live events where you might have a script that needs annotating or something like that, or when you have an in person meeting and want to take notes.
If you need zero-latency access to information while looking very present and professional, or you're playing tabletop games where any technology at all is not appropriate for the setting, paper is amazing.
I've never really tried using paper just sitting at a desk though, at least not as an adult.
I probably should try it, but I really like how going all digital reduces the amount of objects to manage.
I have a good Shaeffer fountain pen that I use for all of paper writing. But I usually use cheap notebooks for notes and random scribbling. What are people's recommendations for good notebooks?
I’ve used Leuchtturm1917 (1) notebooks for the past couple years and recommend them. They have nice paper and an array of sizes and grid patterns - my current notebook is their larger master size; big enough to draw in, which is important to me.
At first I bought ruled or grid-pattern notebooks, but have come to prefer blank - with proper writing posture, my writing is straight yet when I want to draw or sketch, there are no lines to get in the way.
As far as pens: I’d call myself a fountain-pen addict with my one beloved FP - my Lamy 2000. It survived quite a lot of travel in Eastern Europe with nary a scratch.
P.S. in the US, Goulet Pens (https://gouletpens.com/) is a family-run online shop for FPs and everything related. They’re very active on YouTube as well. Amazon may be cheaper but I’d rather my money go to a company that encourages their employees to vote by giving them the day off on election days.
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A note on ink: I bought a bottle of Parker Blue ink in 2018 and have written and drawn with it daily from then till now: one bottle of ink lasted nearly 6 years! I can’t imagine how many disposable pens I’d have gone through; a lot.
As you said, the inks last for years. That's when I realized, I need to buy the best of the best quality possible with Inks. I'm going to guess I did not do enough research on Parker Inks as the ones I used wasn't good enough. I bought a Lamy, and I'm itching to either import a few or buy them the Japanese ones.
Ink filling is like a routine I love, especially with my daughter. She likes fountain pens and she inherited some of mine. I love to lay them out -- the bottles, the ink bloting paper, surgical syringe, napkins, and enough space to not spill -- kinda pretending to be like a Samurai taking care and maintaining his Katana. Even with the convertible, I like to treat it with a clean, precise, and smooth movements of pattens to refill it.
I started on the high-quality fountain pen with the Lamy 2000 too -- gifted by Adobe around the time when they bought Macromedia.
I also used to believe in OK-ish to Good Pens but cheap notebooks punctuated with the usual Moleskin, Field Notes, etc. Then I tried some of those Japanese ones -- they are super good and you don't wanna waste and leave no whitespace -- you write and write everywhere.
Now, my idea it to stick to a standard size wherever possible; I've chosen A5 as my go-to Notebook and a mix of a lot of good ones and a few of the best ones.
I've gifted a couple friends Midori notebooks before. On the go, portable enough to carry in a jacket or back pocket, I'm partial to the A6 blank notebook. Otherwise, I like the free form factor of A5/A4 loose leaf paper, particularly on a spacious desk.
I’ve found the Itoya Profolio Oasis notebooks to be excellent. They are inexpensive, but the paper is high quality and does not bleed or feather. I’ve been using them for a few years now, and they’re great.
Staples recycled from sugar cane, inexpensive but no bleeding or feathering with any of my pens, and very little show-through except when I flex a bit and go slow, which I don't do in general use. The shading with sheaffer blue-black and pilot blue is pretty good too. My pens are all cheap steel nibs with ef or f japanese, or small italic/stub.
I've been loving this retractable fountain pen, the A1 Moon Man[0], I got recently. Uses the exact same schematics as the Pilot VP, but it was only $20!
Of course, technically you can get a retractable ballpoint pen for a few cents but I digress.
I've hardly touched a fountain pen since my primary school days, but I recall that regardless of brand of pen or ink, everyone found that if you left a pen with its lid off the nib would dry out in an annoying way.
Does modern ink (or nib technology?) prevent that being an issue, or does your retractable pen have some clever way to close the nib opening when it's retracted unlike a typical retractable biro/other pens?
I have one too. I bought it to see if I could get used to the clip placement before buying a Pilot Capless (or Vanishing Point depending on where you live.) I was surprised by the smoothness of the EF nib.
I still haven´t bought a Pilot Capless, but I now know the clip doesn´t bother me, and I bring the Moonman to the gym to track my workouts.
I've had a Lamy Safari that I bought as a kid back in 1997. I loved the pen, but as a left hander, I fell out of using it quite a long time ago. Just yesterday I read that they have left-hand nibs, and now I'm quite interested in them again. I've been using a Lamy Swift rollerball for several years now, that I really enjoy.
A lot of this advice applies to any hobby or even profession that involves buying your own tools or supplies.
One of these days I want to make some time to do paper journaling with a fountain pen again. It's very inconvenient compared to digital but it sure is a cool piece of living history and everyone says it's better for your memory than digital.
This is something I try to encourage everyone to do. I don't know why so many are averse to selling things. It's so easy to do with sites like eBay. The great thing is once you know you can do it it lets you try new things without worrying. Thinking about getting into fountain pens? Buy a second hand one. The worst that can happen is you don't use it and resell it for close to what you paid. If buying brand new, always check the second hand value. The difference, plus transaction costs, is what you stand to lose. It can make many things more accessible than you might think.
A related hobby which I think might be up many a geek's street is calligraphy. You don't need expensive tools for it, just some ink, a dip pen handle, some nibs, and paper. Being able to write cards and such with beautiful writing is really well appreciated.
Oddly enough, I find cheap Chinese fountain pens to be quite... for lack of a better word, random, but in a good way.
They cost a couple of dollars, and some are horrible and some excellent. You buy five, and by fluke, one will be really, really good, for much less than the cost of a name-brand.
I remember in school, we would buy these super cheap fountain pens. And then as they started to break down, starting combining them. Take the good nib from one pen and put it on the pen with a unbroken body. Get the cap from some other pen, etc. Quite a lot of fun.
A while back I picked up a bunch of cheap Chinese pens. About half were a terrible writing experience, they ended up in the garbage. The other half had a mix of decent with the occasional /really/ smooth writing experience. I'd keep the good ones to give away to people who showed interest in my pens.
I write everything with a fountain pen in school from 8-18, and a bit in college. I enjoyed them and ended up with a couple of nice ones when my parents realized that I both enjoyed them and had to write essay after essay so having a good pen was worth it.
But since leaving school I seldom write anything on paper. The occasional address on an envelope or signing forms for the kids for school is about it. Not enough to keep the ink flowing in a fountain pen.
Where are people here writing so much that a fountain pen is useful? Genuine question, I’d enjoy writing again, I just don’t really need to enough to make it worthwhile. Every once in a while I’ll refill a pen and then they dry out and crust up.
I used to have a cheap TWSBI eco EF and looooved it. Changed for a more expensive pilot e95s EF and it feels a bit like the montblanc I’ve tried: not as smooth at my TWSBI. How can I prefer a much cheaper pen? Am I doing it wrong? (Also that cartridge is so freaking small, and who thought half a pen was a good idea)
You're not alone - I've tried quite a few Pilots, Lamys, MBs, FCs, etc. and my TWSBI 580 EF is still the smoothest and easily the favourite. I now own two, in case I lose one.
Thanks for the paper recommendation. I'm really enjoying Midori MD at the moment.
As written by somebody who was quite clearly never forced to use one at the pointy end of a cane.
I hate fountain pens with a burning, unbridled passion - from 6 to 17, they were the only acceptable writing implement at school, and I just remember endless blotting, leaks, ruined shirts, thefts, bent nibs (it was considered sport to grab someone’s pen and bang it hard into a desktop), and of course there was always some idiot blowing through theirs in the back of class, drizzling everyone with ink.
The moment I was finished it went in the bin, and ever since I’ve used disposable biros.
Fountain pens are an anachronism, kept about seemingly solely to torture children.
We used fountain pens at school back in the day. There was no sport to bang others’ pens into the desk (although there’s no shortage of other stupid sports like crotch grabbing or anus poking), and no one drizzled everyone with ink, ever. I don’t recall any ruined shirt but maybe it happened at some point. Your whole experience sounds very foreign and may not be representative.
You must have schooled with some remarkably mature children - in my experience if you give a 7 year old something that can be used for hijinks, it will be used for hijinks.
But either way, they were just hideous to use, and I can’t even say how many essays I had to rewrite because the pen would spontaneously decide to dribble all over the page.
It’s also left me with appalling penmanship, as it’s not like anybody ever taught us to write with fountain pens, as it was expected that you would Just Know, and if you didn’t, a few rounds of detention copying out the school rulebook would ensure you did.
I have the same experience, just in some rural school in France (ZEP, meaning supposedly with more "difficult" population than average) in the 90s.
I still like fountain pens but I almost never write by hand anymore. Most of my classmates seem to have stopped with them as soon as they were allowed to though, which I never understood.
Eton group, and a prep school in an even more anachronistic vein. Our Greek textbooks had doodles and inkblots from bored kids who had died a century before I was born.
I think 90% of the blame lies with the British public school system, 10% with a very low quality pen, or maybe manufacture was worse a few decades ago.
Caning ended at least a decade before I was at school in England. The teacher when we were 7 or so showed us how to write nicely with the fountain pen. Boys flicking ink happened very rarely. I don't remember any intentional damage.
(Foreigners: "public school" in Britain means those extremely expensive schools that look like Hogwarts but have teachers more deranged than Snape and children more malicious than Malfoy. I'm amused by the anecdote about the textbook, as that's a plot point in Harry Potter.)
It seems the issue was that your classes were full of deviants and for some reason you've projected the issues onto an inanimate object, a writing instrument, instead of the actual problem.
I knew from just the first line that this was English schooling experience. My dad is, unfortunately, left handed and went through a very similar experience. He got caned so much.
Thankfully by the time I went to school everything was completely different. No fountain pens at all, very patient teachers, no caning. Complete reversal from the experience of school in my dad's time (he was born in '59), which honestly sounds more like prison than anything.
He left with no O-levels too. This was back when if you were struggling the teachers just decided to abandon you.
The market didn't move on.
Montblanc, Lamy and Pelikan make good money each year with Fountain Pens. If you have to write an Examen in university you would also prefer a fountain pen, because Stuff written with Biros looks like Shit as opposed to Gel Pens or Fountain Pens. And yes the looks also matter there
I used to like using fountain pens, but now I use Uniball Eye pens almost exclusively.
They write almost as well as a good fountain pen but with none of the faff. And you can just leave them lying around, in bags, in pockets, etc. without worrying about the orientation, or whether it will be left so long that the ink dries up, or whether your valuable pen will go missing.
If you haven't used one, try one. They write remarkably smoothly and are cheap enough not to have to care about. They're "cattle, not pets" but for pens.
I use Uni-Ball PowerTank pens for the same reason. Nowhere near as smooth as fountain pens, they're just nice ballpoints, but they're $2 space pens that work ever single time.
I assume the 10 pack I got will probably last me a decade or more of occasional use.
I do like fountain pens, but to be honest... the faff is pretty much the whole point for me. They're fun fashion accessories for when I want to look and feel really strongly like I'm not a phone scrolling addict.
I've only used the cheap ones and I'm always pretty happy with performance, since my only expectation is "A bit nicer than the cheap ballpoints I'm used to".
I like these, esp. the flight safe Elite versions, but it creates too much waste at the end. A super sealer like Lamy 2000 or Esterbrook Estie can go months without writing a single dot, and continues writing without skipping.
Also not all pens have the same leak resistance. Some of the pens definitely do not care about their orientation as much as others.
I had a brief, but passionate fountain pen phase and it was great. I mainly used Pilot metropolitan, and found the world of inks to be fun to learn about. Then I had a pen leak a bunch of red ink on me on a plane somehow and fell out of love. I have since moved on to fineliners for my handwriting needs, but have considered going back and getting a fountain pen.
Also love them, love the simpler ones I have from pilot etc. I also deeply cherish the vintage Monte Blancs given to me by my loved ones, and I bought one of the retracting boehms for myself.
In any case, it's a great thing to get into, you meet some great people, and get to enjoy them in every day life.
If you haven't been to a pen show, I highly recommend you go.
I feel like I can never start with fountain pens because of my left-handedness. I've tried learning to write overhand and underhand and neither have stuck. All I want from my writing experience is to do nothing different, _use_ nothing different, than a right handed writer would other than the hand I'm using to write.
Apologies for the off topic comment, I turned off adblock recently to try to support websites more, but, this site really blew me away on how many ads one could load into a simple blog. Reinstalled adblock right away :(
- when the pen goes dry, clean it thoroughly before refilling or replacing the cartridge
Back when I was writing a lot I was able to remember to do that every other time, but these days, it just gets done each and every time.
The other issue is how long a pen can be left with ink in it:
- days are okay - weeks are probably okay - months are not okay
So, unless confident you'll be using it again in a week or two, empty, and flush and dry thoroughly before putting away.
And a final recommendation --- try an italic or stub nib, and get a book on Chancery Italic:
https://sites.google.com/view/briem/free-books
or see:
https://www.handwritingrepair.info/