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Pen-Fi (FPs, RBs, BPs, etc...) [56k Warning]

Feb 18, 2015 at 12:36 AM Post #2,671 of 2,804
silent one said:
... Very excited to hear you're at level to practice Hiragana and Kanji. Think I'll start looking/practicing Kanji this spring. Will be starting from scratch so Hiragana maybe needed as well. But I'm always reading somewhere how Americans are interested in learning how to speak the language but not write. And that learning Kanji could actually help non-natives speak better.

If I'm going to do it, I'm going to sacrifice and study it all. 
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Do it man! I have to say that learning Japanese is far, far more fun than any of the Indo-Eurpoean languages I have studied (or tried to :confused:) during my life. Because it is so totally different from English you really have to start tabula rasa which in a way makes things easier ... sort of.

がんばって!


To segue from Japan back to pens, with a tangent off to the tea thread, here's what I have been using to keep my pens from rolling away off my desk.




Cherry wood tea scoops ( 茶さじ) work great as pen cradles.


 
Feb 26, 2015 at 11:09 AM Post #2,672 of 2,804
The Pelikan Stresemann is here!
cool.gif
Collecting it tomorrow.
 
Feb 28, 2015 at 7:23 AM Post #2,673 of 2,804
Has anyone use a capless/retractable fountain pen for a significant time (longer than someone writing a pen review)? 
I prefer to use a fountain pen for everything, but for tasks where you're only writing every few minutes, it's inconvenient to keep replacing the cap to stop it from drying.
 
The most famous one is from Pilot.

 
Feb 28, 2015 at 9:18 PM Post #2,674 of 2,804
aeneas said:
  Has anyone use a capless/retractable fountain pen for a significant time (longer than someone writing a pen review)? 
I prefer to use a fountain pen for everything, but for tasks where you're only writing every few minutes, it's inconvenient to keep replacing the cap to stop it from drying.
 
The most famous one is from Pilot.
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Absolutely. It's the main reason I bought mine. I've had the matte black Vanishing Point for two years and use it everyday for quick notes. I can't be bothered unscrewing pens and/or capping them just to jot things down. It's why I never bought a Kaweco or a TWSBI mini.
 
Mar 3, 2015 at 11:10 PM Post #2,677 of 2,804
Recently I've been having problems with a new ink that I bought. I bought Noodler's Baystate Blue a few weeks ago, flushed out my Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy Al-star pens and filled them up with the new ink but neither of them seems to want to feed very consistently at all with the new ink. I've tried flushing them and filling them again but with no luck. What should I do?
 
Mar 4, 2015 at 3:19 AM Post #2,678 of 2,804
mechgamer123 said:
  Recently I've been having problems with a new ink that I bought. I bought Noodler's Baystate Blue a few weeks ago, flushed out my Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy Al-star pens and filled them up with the new ink but neither of them seems to want to feed very consistently at all with the new ink. I've tried flushing them and filling them again but with no luck. What should I do
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Baystate Blue is a rather wet ink, I'm very surprised your pens don't feed consistently... Perhaps you could try and mix in some water into the ink to make it wetter/less saturated, it could help it flow better. Like a 1:6 ink ratio? Good Luck!
 
Mar 4, 2015 at 9:17 AM Post #2,679 of 2,804
noobmachine said:
   
Baystate Blue is a rather wet ink, I'm very surprised your pens don't feed consistently... Perhaps you could try and mix in some water into the ink to make it wetter/less saturated, it could help it flow better. Like a 1:6 ink ratio? Good Luck!
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Agreed, BSB is typically a nice flowing ink.  I often have problems with it being too wet in some pens.
 
Adding water to an ink will actually, normally, make it act a bit "drier", surprisingly enough.  Ink typically flows better than water in most cases, so you'll probably just be de-saturating the color (in BSB that's actually not such a big deal!).  What you would need to add would be a surfactant.  They have special surfactant chemicals (Lubrol is one that I know of), but using normal dish soap should work fine as well.
 
I've never done this, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd try mixing a couple of different concentrations to see if one works.  Start off with really low concentrations and work up.  You don't want it to be too wet, otherwise it'll just leak right out of the pen.  Maybe a small drop of dish soap mixed with a cup of water (distilled preferably), then add a drop of that to a small vial of ink.
 
Good luck!  Just out of curiosity, what ink were you using before?
 
Mar 4, 2015 at 1:14 PM Post #2,680 of 2,804
Yeah I've always seen that Noodler's ink is pretty wet. For the Pilot Metropolitan, I was originally just using the included black ink well beforehand, and in the Lamy I was using Noodler's Heart of Darkness before converting them both over to BSB. I even tried switching the nibs on the Lamy just in case it was the nib causing feeding issues.
 
I guess I'll try adding a drop of soap to the nib and see if that has any effects on feeding. I really hope I can solve the problem some other way though, because having to add extra gunk every time I have to fill the pens up would be unfortunate. 
 
Mar 7, 2015 at 9:26 AM Post #2,681 of 2,804
mechgamer123 said:
Recently I've been having problems with a new ink that I bought. I bought Noodler's Baystate Blue a few weeks ago, flushed out my Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy Al-star pens and filled them up with the new ink but neither of them seems to want to feed very consistently at all with the new ink. I've tried flushing them and filling them again but with no luck. What should I do?
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Call me crazy, but cap that bottle up tight and give it a few turns, a very light shake to get everything mixed. I was having similar issues with my Noodler's Borealis Black in my Sheaffer 100, accidentally spilled the bottle, mixing around the ink that was in the bottle. Now, what's left of it performs much, much better.

Give it a shot! Can't hurt. I guess some Noodler's inks are prone to settling.
 
Mar 10, 2015 at 1:08 AM Post #2,682 of 2,804
pwn3r4life said:
 
mechgamer123 said:
Recently I've been having problems with a new ink that I bought. I bought Noodler's Baystate Blue a few weeks ago, flushed out my Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy Al-star pens and filled them up with the new ink but neither of them seems to want to feed very consistently at all with the new ink. I've tried flushing them and filling them again but with no luck. What should I do?
Click to expand...


Call me crazy, but cap that bottle up tight and give it a few turns, a very light shake to get everything mixed. I was having similar issues with my Noodler's Borealis Black in my Sheaffer 100, accidentally spilled the bottle, mixing around the ink that was in the bottle. Now, what's left of it performs much, much better.

Give it a shot! Can't hurt. I guess some Noodler's inks are prone to settling.
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I think that did it! I shook up the Baystate Blue bottle and filled up my pens and they seem to be working better now. Thanks for the tip!
 
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