Search
Server was down - update
Hey all! My apologies for the fact that the instance has been down. For those who are curious, it turns out that the Lemmy volumes had ballooned and taken up all the space on the server. I've reclaimed the space and set a recurring task to make sure that it automatically gets cleaned up going forward.
This shows the vulnerability of small instances run by a single admin - I wasn't able to sit down and troubleshoot the issue. I don't have a good solution for you beyond recognizing that sometimes things willl take time when there isn't a team or paid business with SLAs. If you have things you'd like to see change, I'm happy to discuss.
New banner has been chosen and applied!
We have four possibilities for a new community banner image thanks to @[email protected] [https://kbin.social/u/Valdair]. Please vote by commenting on which image you would prefer. One comment will be one vote. Voting closes on Friday 4 August. #1 - may need some cropping to find the right aspect ...
Thank you to @[email protected] for submitting the suggestions for a banner and to everyone who voted! The photo of the Nakaya Decapod (#3) won by a 60% landslide.
(https://wayfarershaven.eu/c/fountainpens) We need special Diamine inks.
@fountainpens We need special Diamine inks.
Vote for our new banner image
We have four possibilities for a new community banner image thanks to @[email protected]. Please vote by commenting on which image you would prefer. One comment will be one vote. Voting closes on Friday 4 August.
#1 - may need some cropping to find the right aspect ratio: !Image #1
#2 - Montblanc Heritage 1912 !Image #2
#3 - Nakaya Decapod !Image #2
#4 - Waterman, TWSBI, Nakaya, Pelikan, Lamy, Parker, Montblanc, Pelikan, Montblanc !Image #2
Anybody have any idea what this stuff inside the cap of my pen is?
I was riding with a Wing Sung 3009 today (a pretty nice, super cheap piston filler BTW) when I noticed this gunk on the inside of the cap. I'm pretty sure that I filled the pen up with Noodler's Air Corps Blue/Black a few months ago and then let the pen sit. It wrote pretty much right away.
But I noticed this brownish / tan / black residue on the inside of a cap, at the very bottom. I'm not sure if it was there before and I just didn't notice, or if it is new. It almost looks like burned plastic? Or maybe it's mold? But it seems like a weird place for mold to develop since there's no ink there. Has anybody seen anything like this before? I'm probably going to throw the pen away anyway (it's about $3.50) but was curious 🧐.
NPD: Jinhao 82 (Sailor PGS knockoff)
New pen came today: a Jinhao 82. This is Jinhao's "homage" to the Sailor Pro Gear Slim, released late 2022 I think. I got a medium nib, transparent blue body. Takes a #5 nib, available in EF, F, and M.
Overall the pen seems great. Inked it up with Waterman Mysterious Blue and it writes like a treat. Very smooth nib (I don't have a PGS but they have a reputation for having a good amount of feedback; there is none of that with this nib).
The slight translucency and rich dark blue body combine nicely with the gold trim to make this a really attractive pen. I like slightly smaller pens, and got this one to see if I might like the size of a PGS at some point - this is a great fit for me.
Converter included. There's also an O ring - wondering if this might be amenable to eyedroppering?
For $9 this pen is a terrific deal, and it comes in a ton of different color options. This is definitely going to be in my heavy rotation!
I finally decided to try a Pilot Metropolitan... and I hate it :(
[Image description: A white fountain pen with a silver clip on the cap and a silver zebra stripe band around the middle lies on a blue dotted grid desk pad.]
I impulse bought a Pilot Metropolitan (F) about a month ago and have had the worst experience so far. First it took 3 days of experimenting (squeezing the cartridge, flushing, cleaning, shaking, incessant scribbling) to get it to write at all. Then I noticed the nib was a bit off-center in the feed so I aligned it and it wrote pretty well for a while. This morning I grabbed it to take some notes and it won't start, even after a flush with water and re-seating the cartridge. This isn't my first fountain pen (not even my first Pilot!) but I'm really disappointed because the Metro seems to be such a popular recommendation as a solid, inexpensive starter pen. Did I get a dud?
A new pen: The (https://lazybear.social/tags/Kaweco) AL Sport.
A new pen: The #Kaweco AL Sport.
\#100DaysToOffload : 69/100
Wing Sung 601 "Flighter"
I tend to gravitate to cheaper pens including a lot of Chinese-manufactured versions of more famous pens (clones / knockoffs), and thought it might be interesting to post some of them?
This one is one of my favorites: the Wing Sung 601. This pen comes in a variety of different plastic-body colors, which are also great - I have a burgundy version of this pen which works beautifully. The style and hooded nib are clearly an "homage" (read:clone) to the Parker 51. The history between Parker and Wing Sung is interesting and complex, and has been described in detail elsewhere with respect to Hero (which owns Wing Sung.
There is a great review of this pen at The Gentleman Stationer. The version that I have is a "Flighter" all steel body (around $25 on eBay, a bit more expensive than the plastic body version but not by too much).
The pen's big highlight is the vacumatic filling system, which works beautifully. The body of the pen acts as the reservoir allowing it to hold a ton of ink for a pen this small. I find that the pen writes very well and is tremendously reliable - never a hard start, and the construction of the pen and hooded nib have meant that there are no problems whatsoever with drying out. I've picked this pen up after a few months of no use and it writes immediately. The steel body adds a little heft, which I like, and the pen is extremely durable. The hooded nib also makes for a good "stealth FP" experience, if you're in a setting where you don't want to draw too much attention to the pen.
All in all, it's a great pickup for not a huge amount of cash, and has found it's way into heavy rotation for me.
Parker 45 - anybody good with dates and details?
Hi all, I picked up a Parker 45 at an antiques store last year and wondering if anybody has ideas about the era / any other distinguishing features.
I am guessing it's pre-1970s because it has the inverted conical clip screw: image. It's unclear to me, though, if they made these sorts of steel cap / gold clip / plastic body hybrids (e.g. as a variant of the 45 Classic), or if I bought a franken45 with a flighter cap.
In any case, I don't really care because the pen works great! Medium nib, smooth as butter, and I like how it looks. But this is my first vintage pen foray and I'd be interested to know more about it's history!
More images here if helpful (edit:figured out how to get them to display in line!)
Fountain pen blog recommendations?
With the end of Reddit third party apps, I'm looking for ways to fill the r/fountainpens void. (And this community is a great start!)
I use Feedly as an aggregator and am looking for some fountain pen blogs to follow. So far, I've got:
Other recommendations? Thanks!
Now taking submissions for a new banner image
I'd love to see some ideas or suggestions for a better banner image for this community, something that shows a bit more spirit and interest. This current image is one that I found on Unsplash.
If anyone is interested in creating a new banner image for the community, please submit it in the comments of this post!
Happy midsummer all!
!Photo of handwritten note wishing everyone a happy midsummer
I felt inspired to draw a sun but I generally prefer to focus on handwriting and inks. :)
The fountain pen centred Lemmy instance I was following disappeared. Turns out they have moved to (https://wayfarershaven.eu/c/fountainpens), go take a look!
The fountain pen centred Lemmy instance I was following disappeared. Turns out they have moved to @fountainpens, go take a look!
@CommunityLinkFixer Those ones, yeah!
@MidwayTheMagnificent I personally just finished archiving @onebag @happiness and @solotravel. Both on wayback machine and on archive.ph for redundance. I archived both post links and post links with ?scrollToComments=true. Good luck with the rest whenever you can if you start to 😁 It's already late here for me.
@MidwayTheMagnificent There's still some time until 31st of October I guess 😁
@MidwayTheMagnificent I guess you could always archive posts and whatnot on wayback machine or archive.ph and follow the fediverse links for the full discussions? (i.e. the fediverse icon next to each comment/post).
I'll try and archive myself as many threads as possible as well.
It sucks because I found many interesting communities on this server besides the Fountain Pen one.
Thanks @hsl for your hard work!
That is a pretty fascinating ink - seems to be a totally different color depending on nib and paper...
@coys25 Yama-Budo and Momiji from the Iroshizuku line seem to be the default for many people, me included. But I’m low key on the lookout for more inks at the moment, so I’ll stick around and see other people’s suggestions.
@hsl I have lots of notes from my college & high school years, all scattered through various notebooks that I had to take from home when I left. So it's all a mess that I'm not that fond of. My country is also one where the educational system is pretty digitally backwards, so while on college students with laptops became quite ubiquitous over time (I started using a Lenovo Yoga 8 tablet, then a netbook, then the same tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) - even having a tablet in high school was short of a crime, unofficially.
I do indeed have notes scattered through apps, but I find it way easier exporting these and putting everything together, while I cannot easily do this with notebooks.
At my current job, I received a notebook though, and a 4-colors ballpoint pen. I started taking my training notes there, and I must say I find it easier to retain the info and memorize at least where can I find a specific information - something that I'm not sure I could've achieved with a digital note-taking app, no matter how good its indexing is. Also, if you want to schematize things, nothing beats pen and paper imo. Sure, you can buy an expensive tablet with a pen for the screen (an iPad, or a Galaxy Note). But you can get a pen for, what? Less than a dollar at a corner store? (with 2-3 RON I can buy a set of pens, and they hold me for years - probably way more than the aforementioned devices).
With that said, I am still looking for the perfect note-taking app for my personal use. It should have the following features:
- As small as possible, so I can install it on older, not-so-large storage capacity devices of mine.
- The ability to save notes in a format that can be opened on PC (either with the same app or other apps).
I already found some that might fit the bill, but I am not sure which one to pick. Guess I'll figure it out.
Tomoe river in my bullet journal, which I got from a pen show.
Another notebook I use is an Apica, and it's probably my favorite paper. It won't show off shimmer and sheen like tomoe river, but it's very smooth and has a fast dry time. For a lot of my inks, I find the long dry time of tomoe river to be inconvenient at times.
If you’re in the UK, John Lewis sells some great own-brand loose sheets and envelopes. I used them a few years ago for a calligraphy commission. They were slightly textured but not enough to disrupt the strokes of a dip pen so they should be fine with a foundation pen. No bleeding, see through enough for a bold guide sheet. I’ll see if I can find a link.
@MossyFeathers I usually keep 2-10 pens inked with various inks. For me the Lami Safari pens with converters are good, and not too expensive. But you can also look at TWSBI Eco. They don’t take cardridges or converters, but have a built-in reservoar an a screw mechanism for filling with ink.
@hsl I write on the keyboard, on my phone, and on paper with a fountain pen, every day. There's something about a hand-written note that is different from thumb-typing, or keyboarding.
While I form the words in physical print on paper, I am paying much closer attention to what I'm writing; I'm reviewing as I am recording. I also find that writing things out by hand allows me to be concise, to summarize, and to change what I think as I write it, in a way that digital notes don't satisfy.
@redbird The Kakimori is fantastic. If you’d prefer a more pen-like experience try the Sailor Hocoro (https://www.afth.co.uk/sailor---hocoro---dip-pens-1333-c.asp) which you can get in a couple different nib sizes & colours, as well as a feed so that it holds more ink per dip.
I feel like “ink per dip” or “ipd” should be a unit of measurement we use for dip pens 🤣
You should look at kakimori dip pens. It is highly regarded in the reviews I've seen except perhaps the standard pen nib attachment which in one review was considered scratchy and stored very little ink.
Not wanting to advertise Reddit use too much, but you should look at the posts by u/bosseschreibt. He/she/they take some great pictures of writing samples with a number of Document inks, sometime side by side. One of their posts actually made me want a sample of Koh-I-Noor Document Blue. Anyway, their pictures are a great for seeing samples of various Document Inks from multiple brands.
@richard3030 @xoagray I prefer fine nibs because of my rather smallish handwriting. But I know that scratchy thing you’re talking about. I got brave one day and starting using sanding pads on any “off” feeling nibs. I was able to get them to be smooth without a lot of sanding, and now they’re my favorite pens to write with.
Very bare bones at the moment, but it exists. https://wayfarershaven.eu/c/pen_swap [email protected]