So, I'm a coin filler. I sit here and be a coin filler.

Yes, pen stuff.

I won a little antique Eagle coin filler on eBay cheap ($9 shipped), most likely made between 1910 and 1924, and it arrived today. Sadly, I don't forsee it being a regular user. First, it has a trident feed, which IIRC were designed to get around someone else's patent, and are known for having irregular flow. More significantly, the top of the cap is just tabs of folded-over metal from the cylinder, and there's no inner cap. You can see straight through it. That'll make the nib dry out quickly. Worse, combined with the huge air holes of a trident feed, it may make the reservoir dry out quickly. And on top of all that, one of the nib's tines is bent, AND it's untipped. So, it's basically a demo model. BUT, since I mainly wanted a coin filler for the novelty of having one, and the price was definitely right, I'm happy anyway. :)

I'm becoming less and less pleased with my Binder order. The nib I sent back arrived today, but hasn't been looked at yet. :P But, on top of that, remember how I had problems with the Taccia I ordered at the same time? It would stop writing during pauses, sometimes even just the pause between words, so I had cleaned it out and put it away until I was less frustrated. Well, today I started thinking about filling it up and trying it again, and it suddenly hit me what must have been wrong with it. I came home, looked at the nib under a loupe, and I was right: it's baby bottomed. This is when the inner edges of a nib tip around the slot are curved so much that capillary action holds ink within the curve instead of delivering it to the paper. Once you get it going, it'll keep feeding ink, until something stops the flow -- like a pause in writing or even lifting from the page to start a new word. Sound familiar? I now really am beginning to doubt whether my order was given the advertised inspection and adjustment. This is an obvious problem. It never should have made it into my hands.

I have requested a refund for it, although it's not in compliance with his usual return policy. That stated policy on his webpage doesn't give me a good feeling, but I'll just have to see what happens.

Now, back to happy stuff. (See how I've got a bullshit sandwich here? ^_~) My happy spiffy good Snorkel arrived today. I think it might be Peacock Blue (a rare color, worth around $150 when restored), but I'm not entirely sure as I've never seen Peacock Blue or a normal aqua in person. Even if it is the normal color, though, I made sure to bid low enough that I could refurbish and resell it without taking a loss, and that's if I sell it. It's a nice pen in its own right, so I very well may keep and use it either way. Eventually a normal aqua pen will end up in this house, and I can compare. I really like the engraving on it: "Best Wishes". :) I've got another snorkel coming that I want to practice on first, though, as I've never repaired a snorkel before. It's just a normal Burgandy, so I can practice with impunity. :)

Sleepy djinn figures she has two choices.

1) I could go to bed. 2) I could babble about fountain pens for a while. So, pens it is! ^_~ I did not have to eat crow regarding the customized italic nib after all. From the photos Laura took of my writing, Mr. Binder doesn't think I'm rotating my pen as I write, and so he asked me to send the nib back so he can check its alignment. Which I did. So now I'm waiting for it to arrive there and get fixed and come home, and hopefully work this time. The "rotating the pen" theory was one I could take or leave. I could believe I'm doing so (although not by much if I am), but at the same time I have other pens I have to rotate the opposite direction to hit their sweet spot (my little pearl-and-white Prick, for one, and the grey Sheaffer tipdip I just fixed last week), and they feel different. This one felt more like it needed to be tipped up rather than twisted back. I do have to say that I think Pelikan makes the nicest fine nibs I've yet tried in my not-terribly-expensive pen explorations. I'm told they have trouble with extra-fines and sizes above medium, but both fine nibs I've gotten have been so smooth. If someone wanted to try a fountain pen for the first time and was OK with the money, I'd definitely suggest an M150 or M200 with a fine nib as a first pen. The M200 marbled colors are lovely if you like them, the black in either is a nice stately pen if you don't, and you can easily (and cheaply) change nibs until you find the size you like without having to buy a whole new pen. The only down side is that either one might be a bit small for some people, but the length is fine if you post the cap, and someone coming from ballpoints isn't going to have any trouble with the diameter. Let's see. Since last I babbled, I finished fixing up two Sheaffer Tip Dip Craftsmans (Craftsmen?), one grey and one burgandy. Sheaffer's burgandy is a very pretty color. I'm about to swear off buying Craftsmen from eBay, though. You see, the sac protectors in the Craftsman pens are made of steel, and will rust when exposed to water. A Touchdown will suck in a small amount of water even if the sac is toast. Many sellers test the pen with water to see if the filler is working, and don't know to open it up and make sure it's dry inside. (Heck, if they knew that much, they wouldn't test with water until they'd cracked it open and made sure the sac was pliable.) Of two I've purchased off eBay, both have arrived with rusted sac protectors. One was past the point of saving -- its carcass is in the parts bin. Except for the section. I'm still trying to get the interchangeable nib out. The second pen just took some steel wool to clean up, thankfully. There is a spot where the rust went through the coating, but it wasn't too bad, so I coated it with carnuba wax to protect it and it should be fine. Nonetheless, I think I'm going to limit Craftsmen to in-person sales. I can tell if one is rusted the moment I turn the blind cap (nothing quite like that crunchy feel), but I have to be able to handle it. Despite that issue, Tip Dips are just totally bitchin' pens. Awesome filling system, easily interchangeable nibs. Best kept secret in pendom. Luckily, Cadet tip dips don't have the problem Craftsmen do. They have a chromed brass sac protector, which survives water ingress much better. And, as an added perk, the one I bought at the same time as the second Craftsman arrived in working order. Just needed a little ink cleaned off the cap, a little grease put on the Touchdown tube, and some ink cleaned out of the nib, and good to go. :) So, there's three pens restored. I also finished with a full sized lever fill (which really only needed a shim on the section and a polish, but still!), and the most adorable little black-and-white gentleman's vest pocket pen. Originally I thought it was a lady's purse pen, but when it arrived it had a stain on the cap where a glued on clip was, and no longer is. The glue stain wouldn't come off, but it isn't terribly obnoxious, and I think it's an interesting part of the pen's history. And also I've got another a mini purse pen to the point where it just needs to be waxed and it's ready for the collection box. I probably overstate the importance of a clip or its absence in determining whether my mini pens were ladies' or gentlemen's, but it's a convenient dividing point nonetheless. I had a humbling realization. I was thinking "I've got to get some of these pens in my work box fixed and turned around so I can get some cash flow back" (for more pens, of course). Then I looked at what's actually IN my workbox. There's the mini pens, but they're mine. There's a couple of first-year Touchdowns, but they're also mine. Then there's some no-name lever fillers I got to practice sac replacements on, before I learned how easy a sac replacement is. *sighs* I'll be lucky if I could break even on those. (Of course, if I can't, I'll keep them to give to friends or something. But still.) So the good news is that, at most, I've got maybe $50 tied up in inventory. But the bad news is I've only got about $50 in inventory. ^_~ I swear Esterbrooks are coated in cocaine or something. Even the good nibs are too rough for my taste, and I keep saying I don't want any more. Yet I find myself continually drawn to them. I keep looking at them for sale. I keep using them. I've actually got two Esties inked up right now. Two! And I am desirous of inking the third. WTF? At least they're easy to fix up. Esties are kind of the old Volkswagon bugs of the pen world. They're easy to fix yourself, they run forever, and they have no heaters. ^_~ I'll also say that Touchdowns are really satisfying to work on. Relatively complex filling system, and yet I can get one (that isn't rusted) in working order in half an hour if you don't count drying time for the shellac. They're just really fun.

Bookbinding

Forgive the likely rambling nature of this post. I'm gathering up stuff for my latest fancy, which may end up on my webpage sometime in the future if it holds. Sprinkled through here will be various references for binding your own books and journals, mostly perfect (i.e. glue) bound. And one link on replacing spiral bound notebook covers with your own.

First, though, a rant on the price of books today. I went and figured out how much it would cost me to print copies of public domain books per page. Now, I only calculated the cost of paper and ink, so you can argue it's not a fair comparison, but here's why I think it's at least a rough indicator.

1. I'm paying retail for 24lb paper and home printer ink. A professional company would be using cheaper materials, and buying in bulk. Thus I think those retail costs roughly balance out a overhead costs and profit.
2. I didn't count the glue because such a tiny amount is used that a bottle will last ages and it only adds a few cents to the cost.
3. I didn't count labor because a) this is pretty fun for me, and b) it's all automated at the publishers, particularly when you're talking about paperbacks.

So, we're not really at a level where you can compare cents to cents, but I think you can get a magnitude idea. Now, take a book like, say, the public domain Arsene Lupin novel The Hollow Needle. 196 pages, more or less. Paper and printer costs, I could print and bind my own copy for around $5. (Actually closer to $4, but I don't know that I quite believe HP's claims about how many pages their black cartridge will print, so let's call it $5.) I would check how much it would cost to have Kinkos print it for me, but that's not a trivial estimate, so it'll have to wait for another day. To have it done by Lulu.com would cost $8.45, which I wouldn't begrudge too much since a print-on-demand company has higher overhead and labor costs than a large scale publisher. What's the cost at Amazon.com? $11.99. For less than 200 paperback pages!

Naturally, it varies from book to book. The widely-available Frankenstein (around 350 pages) would cost me $8 to print. The cheapest of mass market paperbacks will cost around $5, but they use cheaper paper. On the other end, though, if you were to take Proserpine and Midas... Wait, you can't take Proserpine and Midas, because it's not in print! *snarls*

An aside: Sooner or later, I want to do a post talking about the book "How to Suppress Women's Writing", which I recently read. For now, though, it's nicely summarized at Cupidsbow's "How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor." Don't let the title turn you off, because the point is that it is not fan fiction that makes women poor, but rather a system than minimizes (and in fan fiction's case, even illegalizes) women's artistic contributions.

Anyway, back to the rant about book prices, it seems to me that this should be something it wasn't even worth calculating. If a company is publishing a paperback copy of something public domain, they ought to be able to do it cheaper than I could do myself, full stop.

However, this does lead to one of my potential webpage fancies. Project Gutenberg is a wonderful thing, but a long novel can be a pain to read on a computer screen. I'm tempted to take some of their texts, format them to be ready to print and bind at home, and put those up in PDF format on my webpage. I could be formatting them as I read them, and it wouldn't be that much more trouble at all. And I like the idea of thumbing my nose at overpriced printing companies. (Actually, in an interview with Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg's founder, talks about how between 1955 and 2005, gas had gone up 10 times over and people bitched and moaned left and right, but in the same time period books had gone up 40 times over, and no one talks about it.)

Of course, once the book is printed, it's got be bound together. So finally, some tutorial links.
First, there's this guy who uses a book press. In the comments there are dimensions and rough instructions on making one. I used one when I bound a copy of Laura's Hand-Me-Downs for Christmas, and liked it.
But, you don't need one if you don't want the trouble, or only want to do one or two things. Instead you can use clothes pens, like this woman uses making her journals (which I think she sells professionally, BTW). Or another site had basically the same thing, except he used rules and binder clips instead of a homemade bookbinding press.
One note here: despite what the first tutorial says, don't use Gorilla Glue. It sucks for book spines. I don't know if the formula has changed since the tutorial was written or what, but it dries hard and brittle. Instead, white glue for a start, or a book-binding PVA glue. I've also seen Poxy Stix-On contact Cement or DAP Weldwood suggested.

If you want to kick it up a notch, Wayne Schmidt is very serious when he binds his books, even matching the size and formatting of professionally printed paperbacks and hardbacks. Even if you don't want to go that far, his instructions are pretty good (and he has another alternative for a bookbinding press).
FYI, I printed Laura's on letter-sized paper cut in half, which Kinkos did for $1.50 a cut (and it only took one cut on a whole ream of paper). A5 paper (or A4 cut in half) would work fine, too. Either is more convenient and less wasteful than cutting commonly available printer paper to professional book size.

One thing to keep in mind is that lots of home printers (ours included) can't print edge to edge. So if you're printing a cover that fills a whole page, either make the background white, put in a white border that blends nicely into the book, or have a professional printing service do it. Some photo printers can print edge to edge, so someone who was going to do a lot of these might consider one of those. (Neh, Laura, remind me. Do we still have that one that came as a near-freebie with my computer, or did we give that to my mom?)

Whomp. I think that does it.

Nothing worse than a botched willpower recovery roll.

Because not only were you low on willpower when you started, then you end up even lower when you botch. :P I heard back from Binder, and he thinks maybe I'm twisting the pen and need an oblique nib. Which means I may be eating a little crow, but let me say that it tastes better than trying to swallow those emotions when I'm upset. We'll see. I decide to empty out the Taccia, clean it up, put it back in the pen box, and try it some other time when I'm not already upset at another pen. The way the ink was acting in the converter, I'm wondering if a flush with a little soap might help. (I shouldn't say this, and it's probably completely unfair, but I'm starting to wonder if my package missed the pass with the legendary Binder magic wand that it's supposed to get. I know the M200 nib must have been tested because it dropped a blot of ink onto the card it was packed with, but there wasn't the usual writing sample included in the package either.) I did get the Sheaffer tipdip I was going to pwn worked on. Unfortunately I was still a little upset, and ended up cutting the sac short by about a quarter of an inch. I decided to use it anyway, and it seems to be working fine now. It'll be a little short on ink capacity, but that's OK. Soaked up water OK (and STILL had green ink in the feed after going through the ultrasonic a full 9 times. WTF?!) Once it dries out, I'll fill it with the J. Herbin Bleu Nuit I took out of the Taccia, plus some extra. And I also get a sac put into one of the mini pens, so once it dries out from its own water test, I'll just have to pop it into the body, give the little guy a polish, and he'll be done. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive. Meh.

Wrecking havok on the fountain pen world

I kind sorta somehow ended up with 8 pens inked, in part because I forgot that dip testing exists when my little Sheaffer ringtop came in. ^_^; (And I finally figured out how to do it right and everything.) So, I told myself that I couldn't ink the new Taccia until I got two of the existing pens emptied out.
Well, the blue Esterbrook FINALLY ran out yesterday (I swear it's been a day away through a week of use), and to my pleasant surprise, so did the Waterman Kultur. Of course, the Kultur goes right back into the rotation, because it is the pen I use to test samples from Pear Tree. But it counts nonetheless!
Actually, I'm kidding there. The other pen I expected to run out when I made that rule is a green-striped vintage Diamond that I repaired, and I've had filled with Parker Washable Blue Quink to test it out. The damn thing is empty; it just won't admit it. No, really, it is. There is nothing in the sac; I've flipped the bar all the way open checking the level. (Kati lives dangerously with her pens. I have a bad habit of checking the ink level of lever fills but slowly using the lever until extra ink appears on the feed.) All the ink is left in the feed, and I just can't quite get it to admit that. But it can't hold out forever, and then I'm filling my Taccia, dammit.


I feel bad. My pen box has six pens that I have yet to ink. And that's going to get worse this weekend, as I plan to do some *takes appropriate voice* EXTREME PEN REPAIR! My repair box has 19 slots, and 18 of them are filled. I'm wanting to take care of as many of those as possible (which just moves them to my user pen box for testing, but what can you do?) I know I can't empty them all out, though. The remains of the rusted Sheaffer tip dip need to stay until I confirm that the one I cleaned mold out of is really clean. (Otherwise I'm swapping sections to get one good pen from the two.) And I've got two first year Sheaffer touchdowns that need bigger sacks than we currently have.

That was actually a little frustrating. I acquired four Touchdowns for the express purpose of learning to repair the system. Of them, one tipdip off eBay arrived rusted beyond saving, and the two standard ones were the first year "fat" models that require larger sacs. And not knowing this, I only ordered the standard Touchdown sac size. But I'm gonnna pwn that grey tipdip today, darn it.

*glances at pen cup* And I won't be able to ink it for a while yet. ;P

--Bwa ha ha! That green Diamond finally admitted it was dry! W00t! --

Now, I could use a little reassurance on this next bit.
Impressions of the customized Pelikan M200 from Richard Binder. Well, overall it's great. Nice variation and shading, easy to use. But, there's two things I don't like about it. First, the sweet spot is a little high for me. I usually hold my pen around 45° to 60° from horizontal; the sweet spot seems to be more in the 60° to 75° range. And, it's a bit dryer than I'd like. I was thinking I'd like nice average flow, not too wet and not too dry, so I asked for a "5" on a scale from 1 to 10. If this is a five, I'm thinking I actually want a 7 or maybe an 8.
In retrospect, I can't blame Richard for the wetness. The nib lays down a nice flat line. No skipping or skimpiness with the ink, but no extra moisture there. Thinking on it, that is a good place to set your "5". It's more than I misunderstood the range across which fountain pens can act, which means I misinterpreted the midpoint.

I'm thinking about contacting him about the sweet spot's vertical location, though. I feel like I have to hold the pen in a death grip to keep it there. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to ask if he would lower it without a fee, would it? (Someone reassure me here. Believe it or not, I'm shy.) The worst he can do is say no, I asked for the wrong range and that's what I got. And if he does I think I can train myself to use it as-is. But he can't say yes if I don't ask, and I'd be happier if I could use it at my usual angle.


OK, enough pens. Lets talk ink. ^_~

I HATE Parker Washable Blue Quink. We got some specifically to use as a tester ink for newly restored vintage pens, and... I just can't do it. It's so BORING! Waterman Florida Blue has character compared to blue Quink!
I'm switching to the Waterman blue-black and the J. Herbins for testing. Those more expertly than I suggest using one ink consistently for testing, but... That's just not in my nature. And really, the important part is that you be familiar with the properties of the ink so you're just judging the pen, and I feel pretty familiar already with the different types I'd be using.

Also, I got some new samples from Pear Tree, and I have very high hopes for J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen as a better-behaved replacement for my Noodler's Saguaro Wine. I'm madly in love with the Saguaro color, but it dries slowly and smears badly; seems I can't use it without ending up wearing some of it. The Rose Cyclamen is a very bright magenta, possibly brighter than the Saguaro, if you can believe that, and seems better behaved. So once my Kultur's converter deigns to dry out, I'm going to load it up with the Rose Cyclamen and give it a whirl.

I love the Pear Tree sampler program, and it's excellent for screening colors. Unfortunately, I think it may take me several pen fulls to really evaluate an inks full properties, so I'm just going to have to accept the possibility of dud ink bottles now and again. Ah well, every other store makes me try to full bottle right off, so there you are.

These are the kinds of problems you want to have.

My customized tiny cursive italic nib arrived today! Which works out nicely, because my Pelikan M200 arrived yesterday, so in five minutes or so I should (knock on wood) be able to assemble what is hopefully a magnificent pen. And of COURSE I'm going to ink it right up. Never mind that I've got... 1, 2...7 pens already inked up (work pen shouldn't count, though). I've got to see if I have actually achieved uberpen status or not, after all. So, I've got to decide what to ink this puppy up with. The Saguaro Wine is my favorite color of the inks present in the house right now this moment and what was used in the sample I loved, but Noodler's is not the nicest of things to do to a brand new pen, nor the best for evaluating a pen's properties. Violette Pensee is my next favorite, but it doesn't shade. None of the J. Herbin inks that I've tried so far do, as lovely as the colors are. (I think J. Herbin is my favorite brand of ink so far.) I think I'll go for the Waterman blue-black. I haven't used it in a while, it's a nice color even if not my favorite, pretty shading, and you can't ask for a better behaved ink for evaluation purposes. And the Taccia arrive to. (Poor thing, destined to be overshadowed from the first.) The garnet red looks very nice in person, and it comes in a sweet zippered faux leather carrying case to boot. I'm not going to ink it up until I get some stuff cleared out of my pen cup, though. BTW, Mergle, I mixed up the Noodler's black/Waterman blue-black on Tuesday night. No precipitates so far, and the ink is just black on paper. I'm not really in a good position to evaluate the quality changes, though, because I put it in a pen I've never used before, so I don't know what's the ink and what's the pen. On my specific Sheaffer Prelude, though, it is the nib creepiest thing ever. Dayum. I've had a little trouble with flow tapering off, although a shake of the pen (I know, I live dangerously) gets it going just fine again, and it stays that way until it's sat for a while. Since it is a brand new pen, the feed probably isn't completely primed is my guess there. But, in any event, no instant pen death in the mix.

Pens Make Everything Better

Despite some trauma with my water heater spraying water all over my basement, the day came out OK because I had some fountain pens arrive, and that makes everything better. Especially the prize among them, a gold-filled Sheaffer ringtop in beautiful condition, with a flexible nib. A nice wet-noodle-y nib WITH fast springback. Very much what I was looking for in a vintage nib. It's a little scratchy, and the pen is quite short even for my itty bitty hands, but a wonderful buy nonetheless.

And that makes me happy. :)

I don't really want to be a Noodler's basher

BUT, if an ink

1. has flow properties that are significantly improved by adding an additional 10-20% of plain water, and
2. sends large flakes cascading through the water when rinsing a just used dip pen, and
3. is infamous for falling out of solution, and
   
4. shows absolutely no loss of darkness when diluted with an equal amount of water
   

then it's not highly saturated, it's over saturated. I'm sorry, but in my humblest of opinions, at that point the additional dye is detriment.

I'm not thrilled with the flow properties of Noodler's black, but I do like the waterproof part. So I thought I'd add some Waterman Blue-black to it and see if I can't get something that flows nicely while still retaining a waterproof component. And if it gets any slight blue shading, bonus. But, before I did that, I wanted to see how far the Noodler's black could be diluted before the black started to lighten, since if it got wet, the Waterman's would wash away and only the Noodler's would be left. So, first I tested by adding plain water to 10 drops of Noodler's ink, one drop at a time, writing a sample with a dip pen after each drop was added.
I stopped at 10 drops of water, which looked identical to the pure black ink. Worse yet, the first drop of water made the ink flow MUCH nicer, and two was pretty good. (After that, it started getting a bit soggy).

I think once my sample bottle dries out, I'll mix up half Noodler's black and half Waterman blue-black and see what happens. It should flow fine, since the Waterman is more viscous than water. It's mainly a question of if the color gets any nifty shading effects, I think.

(In case you're wondering, blue-black is the only Waterman I have right now.)

Now I'm curious to try this with my Saguaro Wine. Maybe a little water would keep it from smearing so easily. But I should have a J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen sample coming any day now, so it may end up being a moot point.

So much for world domination.

My plan to conquer the fountain pen world didn't quite go according to plan. Ordered my marbley blue M200, and a "star trek" nibbed Hero just fine, as well as a glass dip pen hopefully acceptable for testing ink colors. Went to Richard Binder's page, ordered my customized 0.5 mm cursive italic nib just fine, went to get my Royal Purple Taccia Continental... Dammit. Between last night and this afternoon, they sold out of Royal purple. Do I want Royal Purple $20 more than another color? No. Well, do I want one at all if I can't get the one I want at the price I want...? Yes. -_- I talked myself into it. It'd be nice to have another nice converter pen to test ink colors in. (Believe it or not, I've managed to end up with a dearth of cartridge/converter pens. My pen box is invaded by lever fillers and touch-down variants.) And I really want to try a Taccia nib. I ended up ordering a garnet red Continental instead. I won't be completely surprised if I get an e-mail telling me they no longer have it in fine, though. In which case, cracked ice in fine or nothing. I'm not willing to go up a nib size; I write small. I'll confess I was tempted to go ahead and order my Falcon. But, I don't really want to get two REALLY nice pens at once. This way I'll be able to enjoy the customized one for a while, and then I get to get another new toy.

I think I'm going to go get myself on trouble.

I was going to send two nibmeisters requests for suggestions for the custom nib I've been talking about and let them duke it out. BUT, turns out one is in Japan for a few weeks, and there's a smoking crater where my patience is supposed to be, so I'm going with the first. He suggested a 0.5 mm cursive italic for an M200, which will be a custom order. And since I expected either that, a stub italic, or a "there's no way I can do all that in one nib. If you're willing to compromise on...", AND the other guy doesn't generally work on the "tradition" line of Pelikans, it sounds good to me and I think I'll give it a go. So, my master plan to take over the fountain pen world is to order the custom nib and maybe a Taccia Continental Royal Purple from him (because I'm a brat, and he has it the absolute cheapest I've seen, and I know he'll wave his magic nib-checking wand over it before it ships), and order the M200 that it'll go in from isellpens.com along with a cheap Hero "51" clone with one of the "star trek" nibs if they have a color I like, because I'm geeky like that. That'll about clear me out for this month, with a little left for play, and then next month I think maybe if I don't fritter away too much (or I'm smart enough to get it first), I might get a Namiki Falcon.

One part of me says I should wait until the Sheaffer ringtop and the Esterbrook with the 9314-F I've got coming arrive and try them out first. (It insists it's the sensible part.) But another part of me (which I say is the sensible part) says that after trying the Pelikan M150 (ooh... so nice...), there is no way any Esterbrook nib will ever be smooth enough for me, and even if the Sheaffer perfectly recreates the writing I want the way I want, no lever-fill ringtop will ever be able to keep up with a full day of intense story writing. Hell, I've killed full sized lever-fills with that. Can't guarantee an M200 will make it, either, but it's got a better chance and will give me warning if it won't. (Clear ink window, let's you see how much you've got.)

Now I just need to figure out what nib I want to get on the M200 when I buy it. I know from the M150 that I like the fine, but I already have a perfectly nice M150 with a fine nib I like. I'd like to try an extra fine, but Pelikan is somewhat infamous for not doing them well. Of course, it hopefully won't be in there for long, but if I end up not liking the customized nib, it'd be nice to have an easy fallback.

So, there it sits. :)

I admit it; it's just a matter of time.

I am becoming more and more convinced that I'll need a custom nib to reproduce the writing style I want, and I'm becoming more and more eager to get recommendations and estimates on one from professionals. In fact, the only reason I'm not writing nibmeisters right now is that I really want to ink up the Pelikan M150 first. If I don't like the way Pelikans feel in my hand, that narrows my choices down to... one? My thoughts right now are either a custom nib for a Pelikan M200 (similar to, but slightly larger than, the M15), or a customized Namiki Falcon.

Of course, first I'm assuming that my customized nib would be possible. I'm asking for 0.1 to 0.5 variation, with no conscious effort, and no sharpness or roughness. This very well may be a "chose two" situation, and how much I'm willing to compromise will be inversely proportional to how much it's going to cost.

Actually, another reason I'm rather eager to get an estimate is so that I can budget for it better. My initial enthusiasm was supported by the saved allowance of several previous months where nothing interested me, so little was spent. That buffer is starting to wane now, and I'm going to have to start budgeting to get exactly what I want instead of dinking around trying to figure out what that is. Of course, I wouldn't know what that is if I hadn't dinked around, but I think I do now, so I can stop. (OK, you take my custom nib and grind it onto a Sheaffer Triumph nib on a periwinkle snorkel... OK, that's not going to happen. But let me dream for a second. Ahh...) Knowing how much this will cost me will let me better budget for pens to restore, which is pretty fun.

There's another problem. I have pens I like to write with, and pens I like to restore, and they don't always coincide. Sometimes, but not always.

People at FPN keep telling me dangerous things. First there was the thing about the saturated inks. Then someone pointed out to them, if they buy a pen at $100, enjoy it for a year, get bored, and resell it for $80, they don't view it as a loss, they view it as a rental fee.
Oh, that's a dangerous thing to tell me. There are many cases where I could live with that. ^_~

Thoughts on Saturated Inks in Vintage Pens

There are two brands of fountain pen ink that are well-known for having highly saturated inks: Noodlers, and Private Reserve. They produce a wide range of very rich, very intense colors, but the trade-off is some additional risk using them. Therefore, the conventional wisdom is that these inks are fine for modern pens, but shouldn't be used in vintage pens.

Then someone pointed out something dangerous to me. Structurally speaking, vintage pens are not appreciably different from modern pens. To the extent they are, they were designed to handle the poorer quality, more corrosive inks of the past. Theoretically, then, it shouldn't really matter if the pen is vintage or new. And indeed, of the few arguments this person got, they amounted to one spouting the common wisdom, and two not wanting to risk damaging a vintage and the difficulty of replacing damaged vintage parts.

So I got to thinking about it, and there are really two issues to worry about with the highly saturated inks: staining, and clogging.

First, staining. Really, any ink has a risk of staining, and the further you get away from black and blue, the worst it is. Top risks are red, then purple, then green. Since highly saturated inks have more dye in them, theoretically they'll have a higher staining risk.
Now, there's only so far I can let staining fear hold me back, because any pen in my use will have purple ink it at some time in its life. It's a law of nature. But here's the kick that's easy (at least for me) to forget about: is there anything to stain? The only material on a pen that will stain from ink is transparent plastic. Demonstrators (transparent pens) and pens that have transparent sections can all visibly stain. Anything else? You'll never see it. Even if it does stain, it's on the inside of an opaque tube. Is it really a stain if you can't see it? (Wow, that's downright zen.)
For pens that do have transparent parts, it really doesn't matter if it's modern or vintage. Both are at risk for staining. Age doesn't really figure in at all.

I do have to remark that, of the five pens on my desk right now, only one has a transparent section. Ironically, it's also the only modern one, a Waterman Kultur. And it's the one I shamelessly put highly saturated inks in. ^_~

The other risk of highly saturated inks is clogging. I suspect this is where the "modern pens only" comes in, but again it has less to do with age and more to do with filling systems. Some filling systems are easier to clog than others, and easier to clean that others. 90% of modern pens are cartridge/converter, and that's perhaps the easiest system of all -- you take out the cartridge and either soak or push water through the section, feed, and nib. If it gets clogged with ink, the odds are good that you'll be able to clean it out with relative speed and ease. On the other hand, if an old Snorkel gets clogged with ink, there's a lot of time and a little prayer involved (as I know from experience. :P) But, a modern piston fill without a removable nib is also going to be a pain in the butt to clean, while a vintage Esterbrook with removable nib and feed unit is going to be very easy, despite being a lever fill.
Once again, it has less to do with age, and more to do with the individual pen.

So, my final decision on when and where to use saturated inks comes down to evaluating the individual pen without regard to age. Is it easy to clean? Is it unlikely to stain (or are you not bothered if it does, as with my poor Kultur)? If so, go ahead and use saturated inks with impunity. If not, you're probably better off staying with more traditional inks.

Tiny Pens Are Stalking Me.

Yes, the latest hobby is still going strong. ^_~ But I'm gonna learn how to restore Sheaffer touchdowns soon! By necessity if nothing else. ^_~

Now, I'm purposely collecting vintage ladies' purse and ringtop pens, which means I also end up with some gentlemen's vest pocket pens in the mix. (Don't always see the clip before I bid. And sometimes it's just too damn cute to pass up anyway.) And those are all tiny by definition. But I'm not talking about those.

I'm talking about my everyday (well, semi-everyday) pens. I keep ending up with pens between 4-1/4" and 4-3/4" long. My very first vintage surprised me by being that small. The first Esterbrook I got was an SJ, which is that size. The BHR ringtop I got is that size. (OK, it's a ringtop, so it doesn't count.) I found another Esterbrook with a good nib at a local antique mall. Got it home, it turned out to be another SJ. Funniest, though, is that I bought a modern Pelikan M150 from Pendemonium when they had their end-of-year sale. Opened up? Same size as the Esterbrook SJs.

The nice thing though is that it's not a bad size for my tiny hands. Even better if it posts well.

Remember the Mabie Todd Swan that the person who sold me the Snorkel was going to send me. It arrived. My gosh, what a sweet pen! The cap, as warned, is banged up, but it's such a dark blue that it's hard to see in use, and it is sooooo smooth. He might stay in my rotation for a while.
And ironically, since I patched the cap with wax, that Snorkel is the most reliable pen in my cup right now. Hasn't hesitated to start once since then.

Now, you know the damaged Esterbrook nib that produced the writing I fell in love with. Well, it's smoothing itself out a little bit, which is good. But I was really studying it, and I think I've figured out what's going on. (No, really this time!) The slightest bit of pressure, even just that of the weight of the pen, immediately spreads the tines to produce a light of around .4 mm. So what's really happening when I write isn't that writing pressure is spreading it so much as lightening that pressure on the upstroke is drawing the tines back together to make a fine line (possibly all the finer because of the single bent tine.) The 9048 nib came in, but I don't feel like getting my fingers even more magenta by hot-swapping, so I'll try it out once either my blue SJ runs out of ink or I get a sack in one of my others. I'm kind of hoping an undamaged Esterbrook "flexie" nib might act the same way. If so, that might always explain why most people get little if any flex out of them, since most people keep more pressure than I do throughout their letterforms.

If not, I'm again toying with the idea of seeing if a nibmeister can't custom grind something to reproduce that behavior. I can even send them the Esterbrook nib that does it for an example if they want. It doesn't help that I discovered that isellpens.com has full M200s for $55, and I personally like the blue marble on those better than just about anything else on the Sovereign line. I keep trying to talk myself into a more expensive "more adult" pen (no, I don't know why), and I keep coming back to "but I like the blue marble", so why fight it?

Of course, I want to try out the M150 before buying another Pelikan.
And I'd like to try an Esterbrook 9314-F nib and a Duke 209 calligraphy pen before investing in a custom nib. If I just keep buying pens, maybe I'll never get to it. Of course, I'll have more that way than just going with the custom nib. But I'll have a bunch of pens out of the deal.
(I know, I only have two hands. I can't write with any more than that at a time.  ^_~)