Originally Posted by guitarman19853
Another question i had is paper... my Pilot Varsity bleeds on some papers... I'm the kind of person that takes greater pleasure taking notes if taken with a fine pen so i intend to use it every day... but its my current notebook paper that bleeds... is there certain brands of notebook paper that are more FP friendly?
Clairefontaine and Rhodia. Both are French brands, and many schools in France mandate FPs because they promote good handwriting (the pressure you have to apply with a ballpoint or roller tends to have a negative impact, although good liquid ink ballpoints like the Pilot V-Ball write almost as well as a good FP). For this reason, most French notebooks are reasonably compatible with FP ink. Miquelrius (Spanish) is also very good. Moleskines are very trendy (thus expensive) but their paper is really not all that good for FP use. All of these brands can be found at art supply stores. Obviously, they are more expensive than Mead or Five-Star, but you get what you pay for.
It's a question of porosity and coatings, not thickness - if you brush your hand against a Clairefontaine (which is a premium brand in France, at least for school students), you will feel it is smooth, unlike the abominable toilet paper that passes for stationery from Mead and their ilk here in the US. If it doesn't work with a V-Pen, it will most likely not work with other brands either (the sole caveat being that fine nibs not tipped with a ball tend to be more scratchy and sensitive to paper grades than others).
For letter-writing, the best brands are Crane (all-cotton, they are the ones who supply paper for US currency) and G. Lalo's laid "Vergé de France".
Originally Posted by guitarman19853
What would be a good ink to start out with? I'm a fan of bold smooth writing black inks.
When I was in school, I used Parker Quink Blue-black and black, both are permanent (in France, you could buy a kind of felt-tip correction pen loaded with something like Amodex, which would erase FP ink, but it would only work with washable blue ink, not Quink).
I have now switched to Aurora black, which is the deepest, most velvety black I know, but is very difficult to find. The next one would be Pelikan black, then Herbin black. Rotring brilliant is not bad either. Avoid Montblanc inks, which are utter garbage and fade quickly. Private Reserve and Herbin have some very striking colors.