peterm1
Veteran
I think my favourite classic pen is this one - the Schaeffer "snorkel" (named for obvious reasons if you look at the picture). It writes very smmothly and I love the quirky snorkel that protrudes for filling and then retracts.
http://www.peytonstreetpens.com/sheaffer/1950s-sheaffers.html
I have a similar (cheaper) one but without the snorkel
But my favourite pen of all time was a simple and relatively cheap (by classic pen standards) which wrote like a "the best dream pen ever" because it had a soft flexible solid 14 ct gold nib. I loved it till some sh*t stole it at work. The one pictured below is green. Mine was a pinkish red tortoise shell colour. The pens is made with celluloid I believe and it has a specific smell that reminds em of my childhood - early film or old ping pong balls of all things. (Both originally celluloid).
http://www.peytonstreetpens.com/con...en-marble-flexible-fine-14k-nib-restored.html
I have a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck that I bought perhaps 30 years ago but because of tis size its not my favourite. And its a bit showing. I was going thru my "yuppy" phase.
BTW I have found that Peyton Street Pens http://www.peytonstreetpens.com/ are pretty good. They sell on ebay or from their own site.
http://www.peytonstreetpens.com/sheaffer/1950s-sheaffers.html
I have a similar (cheaper) one but without the snorkel
But my favourite pen of all time was a simple and relatively cheap (by classic pen standards) which wrote like a "the best dream pen ever" because it had a soft flexible solid 14 ct gold nib. I loved it till some sh*t stole it at work. The one pictured below is green. Mine was a pinkish red tortoise shell colour. The pens is made with celluloid I believe and it has a specific smell that reminds em of my childhood - early film or old ping pong balls of all things. (Both originally celluloid).
http://www.peytonstreetpens.com/con...en-marble-flexible-fine-14k-nib-restored.html
I have a Mont Blanc Meisterstuck that I bought perhaps 30 years ago but because of tis size its not my favourite. And its a bit showing. I was going thru my "yuppy" phase.
BTW I have found that Peyton Street Pens http://www.peytonstreetpens.com/ are pretty good. They sell on ebay or from their own site.
Trius
Waiting on Maitani
Peter
Wow - reference to the snorkel takes me back! My Dad had one and although I'm not a pen guy I would love to have one again. Thanks for the memories!
Wow - reference to the snorkel takes me back! My Dad had one and although I'm not a pen guy I would love to have one again. Thanks for the memories!
Henry
Well-known
I went on a trip that fit this thread perfectly! Traveled around Japan the last two weeks with a TWSBI vac700 and a rangefinder.
I've always been very hesitant about taking filled fountain pens on trips, but the vac700 really didn't bleed at all while I was flying here and there, so I was very pleased.
Plus, at Itoya I grabbed three bottles of pilot iroshizuku and a bottle of sailor for 55 USD (even including currency conversion fees) total! I had no idea how affordable those inks were when sourced locally. Later I realized I shoul have just bought one of every color, but the moment had passed and I'll have to wait for next time I'm there.
I've always been very hesitant about taking filled fountain pens on trips, but the vac700 really didn't bleed at all while I was flying here and there, so I was very pleased.
Plus, at Itoya I grabbed three bottles of pilot iroshizuku and a bottle of sailor for 55 USD (even including currency conversion fees) total! I had no idea how affordable those inks were when sourced locally. Later I realized I shoul have just bought one of every color, but the moment had passed and I'll have to wait for next time I'm there.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
daveleo
what?
Dip pens !!! Take me back, do they !
We used those in my very early school years. Long long ago
We used those in my very early school years. Long long ago
dave lackey
Veteran
Heads up!!!
From one of the excellent pen forums, I picked up on the recommendation for the coolest leather notebook with parchment paper and it is fantastic with pen-friendly paper and that wonderful leather smell!!
Name? Bombay Journal
Where? Believe it or not, Barnes and Noble
How much? $18.95 and a smaller size $4.00 cheaper
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/mobil...d=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP1022&k_clickid=3x1022
With 256 pages, this is going to last awhile!! You will not be disappointed using this journal without lines. Kinda makes you feel medieval whilst writing.
It fits nicely in my Billingham bags and what better thing to do when not shooting?
From one of the excellent pen forums, I picked up on the recommendation for the coolest leather notebook with parchment paper and it is fantastic with pen-friendly paper and that wonderful leather smell!!
Name? Bombay Journal
Where? Believe it or not, Barnes and Noble
How much? $18.95 and a smaller size $4.00 cheaper
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/mobil...d=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP1022&k_clickid=3x1022
With 256 pages, this is going to last awhile!! You will not be disappointed using this journal without lines. Kinda makes you feel medieval whilst writing.
It fits nicely in my Billingham bags and what better thing to do when not shooting?
B.Toews
Well-known
Sounds like a fun trip! If you want more Japanese inks at good prices, you can try sites like Engeika, Rakuten and J-subculture. I have ordered through Engeika before with good results, and the prices are much better than in North America...
Henry
Well-known
Interesting, thanks for the tip! I had been ordering all mine from Goulet Pens, which ends up being a bit expensive.
Noodlers, however, they're great for!
Jerevan
Recycled User
I wouldn't say cousins; they more like mum and dad, while the quill being the grandfather or grandmother.
The dip pens are exasperating, quirky and just ... wonderful!
I am using Esterbrook Falcon 048 nibs for writing and inking.
Srono
Established
Not photo of pen but related....
Yoshida-san from Nakaya is setting up nib
Richard G
Veteran
What about Ink?
I bought a Visconti Rembrandt recently. Just a steel nib but lovely to write with. Unfortunately it skips a bit. I ditched the Quink I was using and have just got a lovely bottle of the new Pelikan Edelstein series in TANZANITE. Great ink. A very dark blue black with no violet as one might have expected. Dense. Shades. I like it. I even put it in my M800, one of them. Still getting used to that.
I bought a Visconti Rembrandt recently. Just a steel nib but lovely to write with. Unfortunately it skips a bit. I ditched the Quink I was using and have just got a lovely bottle of the new Pelikan Edelstein series in TANZANITE. Great ink. A very dark blue black with no violet as one might have expected. Dense. Shades. I like it. I even put it in my M800, one of them. Still getting used to that.
telenous
Well-known
Some pens perform their best with specific inks. That's my excuse for having multiples of certain colours , chiefly black and blue-black among them. Edelstein Tanzanite is great for a black-blue kind of blue-black, if that makes sense. I also like, for sentimental reasons, Parker Quink or Waterman blue-black, arguably the same ink under different labels. My favourite among blue-blacks is Registrar's Ink. Wonderful properties, quite dry though and [caution] it does contain iron gall of course.
.
, chiefly black and blue-black among them. Edelstein Tanzanite is great for a black-blue kind of blue-black, if that makes sense. I also like, for sentimental reasons, Parker Quink or Waterman blue-black, arguably the same ink under different labels. My favourite among blue-blacks is Registrar's Ink. Wonderful properties, quite dry though and [caution] it does contain iron gall of course..
Richard G
Veteran
Some pens perform their best with specific inks. That's my excuse for having multiples of certain colours
.
Thanks Telenous. I did like Quink but it seems a bit too thin for me just now and soaks through the paper they have at work here. Tanzanite much less so.
peterm1
Veteran
Some pens perform their best with specific inks. That's my excuse for having multiples of certain colours
.
I have definitely found this too. Some inks are more "scratchy" than others while some seem to be sort of more lubricated and write better.
Also I can strongly recommend that anyone into fountain pens Google how to maintain and tune them. For example it is sometimes necessary to smooth the nib using very fine emery paper or an ultra fine arkansas stone or something of this sort. A pen that is not delivering ink properly can have the tynes of the nib opened slightly too, using something like a razor blade slid into the slot (with great care). I found it necessary to do this with my Mont Blanc MeisterStuck of all things. It fixed the poor ink flow and the pen now writes much better. And a further simple fix is to take out the nib and move the ink feed (the little black plastic thing below the nib) down (to increase flow) or up (to restrict it).
Full instructions are available on some discoverable web pages. e.g. the following. Its not hard for anyone who does not have ten thumbs, it just takes care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvKrrZdXLs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_bNRrPk5MY
http://kcavers.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/basic-fountain-pen-nib-adjustment-101.html
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shadowfox
Darkroom printing lives
From one of my latest vintage pen restoration adventures:
telenous
Well-known
^That's a lovely Vacumatic, Shadowfox. Really beautiful in Azure. Very nice fine line too.
.
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lukitas
second hand noob
An attempt at building a better pen
An attempt at building a better pen
I'm a fan of cheap and cheerful fountain pens
A few things bother me a little about those pens. Small reservoirs, tiny converters. Barrels not quite long enough, often top heavy with the cap posted. Or a cap that dances on the back
When young, I was taught to write with a fude brush : vertical position, fingers high on the barrel. I like to play with the position of my grip, and on most pens, the thread for the cap is in the way.
So I designed a pen that would solve all those problems. Tried to make it as simple as I could : a controlled leak, a reservoir, a simple way of filling said reservoir, in a shape that is a pleasure to write and draw with.
And the cap should make a water-tight seal around the nib.
Bought a mini-lathe, some perspex rod, and started building.
First, I tried my hand at triple entry thread. I wanted a cap that would close in two thirds of a turn. One turn in 3 mm, thread profile is 1mm wide, nearly half a mm deep, and for the cap, I cut 2 mm of thread.
I'm lazy, didn't want to change the thread gearing, so I used the same pitch for the piston and the back cap.
Here is the piston fitted to the section-body. The body and piston together can contain about 4 ml of ink. Not bad. The piston alone fills with more ink than a standard cartridge.
Drilling operations were a real pain in the derrière. Drill bits heat up very fast, and then the plastic melts. I ended up drilling 3 mm at a time, starting with a 4 mm drill, and then stepped up half a mm at a time, up to size.
Some of these cavities took a whole day to bore. Talk about boring.
All the roughed out pieces: at the back, from left to right: the piston plunger with its o-ring, the cap, the body or section. In front: the ring that keeps the plunger in the body, and the back cap.
Setting up for cutting the tapers: 1 over 19 mm. About 2 degrees per side.
And here it is, my first flawed, but working pen:
A bit longer than a MontBlanc 149, especially uncapped. Thread is at the end of the section, which tapers up from 11 mm to 16mm, but the fat part is rather far back: it is comfortable in the hand, and I can put my fingers anywhere I want.
The back cap has the same taper, so the cap fits perfectly when posted. The barrel extends about 2 cm below the cap, so it is easy to not unscrew the back cap, and if you do, there is more than enough grip to unscrew the cap itself. It has a hole in the feed, that retains a 1,5 mm tube, mounting up into the piston. As in the converter in Nooders' Ahab fountain pen, this ensures that the reservoir is filled in two or three pulls. As the pen is very light, filling it makes a significant change in its balance. I think the ink may weigh as much as the pen. One advantage of having the thread for the cap at the end of the section, is that it is (relatively) easy to build an ink-bottle cap in which you can screw in the pen, turn everything bottoms up, and fill like a syringe. An o-ring at the end of the thread should keep everything waterproof.
It is generous with ink. I fitted it with a nr.6 flex nib and matching ebonite feed, and it writes really wet. I like that. No railroading. Don't mind inky fingers.
Lots of mistakes and Bozo moments. After drilling most of the holes, I found out that when the headstock is misaligned, you get helicoidal holes. I discovered too late that my drills cut a hair undersize, so all my inside threads are too small. Had to shave a smidgen off the outside threads. When mounting the back cap in the four-jaw, for cutting the taper, I was too careful about not compressing the thin, threaded part (only 10 mm of straight, before the taper begins), and the part broke loose, made four cracks. I was only cutting a 10th of a mm.
I learnt a lot of lessons. The next one will be a lot better. The biggest lesson I learnt is that turning a pen, from scratch, is a hard, patient slog, and an expensive endeavour. If I were up to production speed I could, maybe, turn a pen in 40 or so hours. If I wanted to live off making pens, I'd have to go hungry to make them way over-priced. I have a few ideas to make the production less onerous. I could mould resin over the inside shapes, and then turn off the outsides. Happily, the inside and outside thread at the back of the body have the same pitch, so it should be possible to make moulds that allow the cured parts to unscrew easily. But pouring resins can be a stinky business, and I would need something to get rid of air bubbles. Who wants holes in their threads?
I'm going to call it 'Le Piston'.
Thank you for enduring this whale of a post. I hope the pictures will make you forgive me
Cheers
Lukas
An attempt at building a better pen
I'm a fan of cheap and cheerful fountain pens
A few things bother me a little about those pens. Small reservoirs, tiny converters. Barrels not quite long enough, often top heavy with the cap posted. Or a cap that dances on the back
When young, I was taught to write with a fude brush : vertical position, fingers high on the barrel. I like to play with the position of my grip, and on most pens, the thread for the cap is in the way.
So I designed a pen that would solve all those problems. Tried to make it as simple as I could : a controlled leak, a reservoir, a simple way of filling said reservoir, in a shape that is a pleasure to write and draw with.
And the cap should make a water-tight seal around the nib.
Bought a mini-lathe, some perspex rod, and started building.
First, I tried my hand at triple entry thread. I wanted a cap that would close in two thirds of a turn. One turn in 3 mm, thread profile is 1mm wide, nearly half a mm deep, and for the cap, I cut 2 mm of thread.
I'm lazy, didn't want to change the thread gearing, so I used the same pitch for the piston and the back cap.
Here is the piston fitted to the section-body. The body and piston together can contain about 4 ml of ink. Not bad. The piston alone fills with more ink than a standard cartridge.
Drilling operations were a real pain in the derrière. Drill bits heat up very fast, and then the plastic melts. I ended up drilling 3 mm at a time, starting with a 4 mm drill, and then stepped up half a mm at a time, up to size.
Some of these cavities took a whole day to bore. Talk about boring.
All the roughed out pieces: at the back, from left to right: the piston plunger with its o-ring, the cap, the body or section. In front: the ring that keeps the plunger in the body, and the back cap.
Setting up for cutting the tapers: 1 over 19 mm. About 2 degrees per side.
And here it is, my first flawed, but working pen:
A bit longer than a MontBlanc 149, especially uncapped. Thread is at the end of the section, which tapers up from 11 mm to 16mm, but the fat part is rather far back: it is comfortable in the hand, and I can put my fingers anywhere I want.
The back cap has the same taper, so the cap fits perfectly when posted. The barrel extends about 2 cm below the cap, so it is easy to not unscrew the back cap, and if you do, there is more than enough grip to unscrew the cap itself. It has a hole in the feed, that retains a 1,5 mm tube, mounting up into the piston. As in the converter in Nooders' Ahab fountain pen, this ensures that the reservoir is filled in two or three pulls. As the pen is very light, filling it makes a significant change in its balance. I think the ink may weigh as much as the pen. One advantage of having the thread for the cap at the end of the section, is that it is (relatively) easy to build an ink-bottle cap in which you can screw in the pen, turn everything bottoms up, and fill like a syringe. An o-ring at the end of the thread should keep everything waterproof.
It is generous with ink. I fitted it with a nr.6 flex nib and matching ebonite feed, and it writes really wet. I like that. No railroading. Don't mind inky fingers.
Lots of mistakes and Bozo moments. After drilling most of the holes, I found out that when the headstock is misaligned, you get helicoidal holes. I discovered too late that my drills cut a hair undersize, so all my inside threads are too small. Had to shave a smidgen off the outside threads. When mounting the back cap in the four-jaw, for cutting the taper, I was too careful about not compressing the thin, threaded part (only 10 mm of straight, before the taper begins), and the part broke loose, made four cracks. I was only cutting a 10th of a mm.
I learnt a lot of lessons. The next one will be a lot better. The biggest lesson I learnt is that turning a pen, from scratch, is a hard, patient slog, and an expensive endeavour. If I were up to production speed I could, maybe, turn a pen in 40 or so hours. If I wanted to live off making pens, I'd have to go hungry to make them way over-priced. I have a few ideas to make the production less onerous. I could mould resin over the inside shapes, and then turn off the outsides. Happily, the inside and outside thread at the back of the body have the same pitch, so it should be possible to make moulds that allow the cured parts to unscrew easily. But pouring resins can be a stinky business, and I would need something to get rid of air bubbles. Who wants holes in their threads?
I'm going to call it 'Le Piston'.
Thank you for enduring this whale of a post. I hope the pictures will make you forgive me
Cheers
Lukas
daveleo
what?
Lukitas, that is a great story !
I envy your skills and patience.
I envy your skills and patience.
lukitas
second hand noob
Thank you Dave!
I have to admit, this was more of a learning curve than a demonstration of skills.
The threads for the caps are miscut, they work only partly. Most of the cavities have helicoidal deformities. But the piston works well.
Kind of surprising to see how fast it sucks ink from the bottle. After the first pull, most of the body is filled. When you push down again, the air from the piston flows out first, through the little tube, and on the second pull, there is only a little air bubble left.
This may sound like boasting, but it writes exactly how I wanted it to write : richly, freely, generously. The nib floats on a layer of ink. No leaks, as of yet. And the long taper from the top of the section to the end of the body is very comfortable in the fingers; I get a lot of control by moving my fingers up and down the section.
Still, I'll be making a few changes. Mostly in machining procedure. Next one is going to be better.
I have to admit, this was more of a learning curve than a demonstration of skills.
The threads for the caps are miscut, they work only partly. Most of the cavities have helicoidal deformities. But the piston works well.
Kind of surprising to see how fast it sucks ink from the bottle. After the first pull, most of the body is filled. When you push down again, the air from the piston flows out first, through the little tube, and on the second pull, there is only a little air bubble left.
This may sound like boasting, but it writes exactly how I wanted it to write : richly, freely, generously. The nib floats on a layer of ink. No leaks, as of yet. And the long taper from the top of the section to the end of the body is very comfortable in the fingers; I get a lot of control by moving my fingers up and down the section.
Still, I'll be making a few changes. Mostly in machining procedure. Next one is going to be better.
Jamie Pillers
Skeptic
This is AMAZING work, Lukas!! The pen is beautiful. I'm envious of your machining abilities! Thanks a lot for posting all of this!!