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The Quest: A journal that likes fountain pens!

October 7, 2014

jimpageadmin Fountain Pens, Strange and Pointless , , , 5 Comments

It’s that time of year again, when I search for an office journal that is fountain-pen friendly!

Journal with Fountain Pen

As the photo below shows, bleed-through is an annoying problem, as I use both sides of the paper and I also write with medium, wet-writing nibs (usually Sheaffer or Parkers). So please wish me luck on this important quest. My current office journal is nice, but the bleed-through drives me nuts (please; no remarks about what a short little drive that is).

IMG_1729

The notebook I’m currently using is a Gallery Leather Desk Planner 9-1/2″ x 7-1/4″ journal. It has detailed color maps of the world, important toll-free number and website info, and is printed on a pretty cream-colored smooth paper. The leather cover is thin and bendable, which I like, and the pages are gilt-edged, which adds a classy touch. But the bleed-through is a deal-breaker for me. Since I’ll be paying for my journal myself–no freebies at this blog–I won’t be reporting on a wide sample, but you’ll learn how my search progresses. Isn’t this exciting?!?!??!

UPDATE:

After exhaustive research—and I’m not kidding you—I opted for the Black n’ Red Executive Notebook, which is an 11-3/4″ x 8-1/2″ linen-lined hardcover journal with 192 gray-lined pages, 33 lines per page. These have sewn bindings and the pages show—at least with a Mont Blanc fine nib and my favorite Levenger amethyst ink—absolutely no bleed through in the little test I did on a back page. I won’t be using these—I got a couple from Amazon at about $15 a pop—until the new year rolls around, but I have high hopes! These also have color geographic and Metro maps, which are neat if not vital to the mission. They look understated, stylish, and businesslike, and there’s a little red ribbon for keeping track of what day you’re on. I’ll keep updating this blog entry as time goes on so keep an eye out for updates!

Fountain Pens Are Good For You!

June 30, 2013

jimpageadmin Family Fun, Fountain Pens , , 4 Comments

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Sheaffer Student Pen Value Pack; Note The Translucent Blue Barrel.

Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, I was a fountain pen user. I can remember the very first ballpoint pens I ever saw, when I was in the first grade (1958 or so) living in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The drug store nearest our school was giving away cheap plastic ballpoint pens from a box that was big enough to hold thousands. Like my classmates, I scurried in, grabbed a handful, and ran to school. I remember snagging six pens that day, and not one of them worked.

Giveaway Ballpoints

Giveaway Ballpoints; My Grandmother Loved Using These!!!

Later, when I saw the Bic ballpoint pens, I was much more favorably impressed. Those pens were cheap, non-refillable throwaways, but they worked perfectly and were good value. I seem to recall that they cost 19¢. If you took the blue plug out of the back end and sucked on the tube barrel, you’d get a mouthful of blue ink; I learned that the hard way.

The Original Bic Pen

The Original Bic Pen

I much preferred my fountain pens, as I was a constant doodler, and fountain pens were better– for me– to draw with. The fountain pens I used back then, and all through high school, were the cheap Sheaffer fountain pens you could get for a buck or so. They used ink cartridges and worked fine. I liked the medium-point nibs on mine.

Sheaffer Student Pen

My favorite Sheaffers had the translucent candy-colored barrels, shown here:

Sheaffer Trans Pen

Sheaffer-Green

A few ballpoints crossed my path. I tried a Parker ballpoint, shown here. I still have it.

Parker Ballpoint

I liked it fine for a ballpoint but went back to my cheap fountain pens. Like every kid in America, I received a Cross ballpoint pen and mechanical pencil set for my high-school graduation. Hated ’em. The pen wrote in a scratchy fashion and the pencil was crap.

Cross Pen Set

Cross Pens Made Me Cross!

For art, I used dip pens with Speedball and Hunt nibs using Higgins India Ink from a bottle, or Rapidographs or Leroy technical, which used cartridges and had nibs in a variety of point sizes. Those pens using India Ink had to be cleaned the second you were done with them or the dried ink was extremely difficult to clean off. I still have a fishing tackle box from college days filled with these dip pens and nibs.

It's Easy To Do This With A Speedball Pen; yeah, right!

It’s Easy To Do This With A Speedball Pen; yeah, right!

When all is said and done, I still prefer fountain pens. My current favorite is a Parker silver-crosshatched Sonnet with a medium nib, which looks a lot like my old Parker 75, but there are several brands in my mahogany pen box and part of the fun of fountain pens is using different pens and inks depending on the mood you’re in on a given day!

Here’s what my Parker looks like:

Parker Cisele Sonnet Fountain Pen

Parker Cisele Sonnet Fountain Pen

Parker calls this silver crosshatch style “cisele,” which is a French term for having a chiselled appearance. Kenneth Parker, president of Parker Pens back in the early 1960s, had a cigarette case with this silver grid pattern, liked it, and decided it would be perfect for the Parker 75 they introduced in 1963. It is a snazzy-looking finish!

Sheaffer Cartridge Pen Ad, 1957

Sheaffer Cartridge Pen Ad, 1957

The Parker 75 Pen

August 28, 2012

jimpageadmin Fountain Pens, Strange and Pointless , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

In 1964, to celebrate their 75th anniversary, the Parker Pen Company introduced the Parker 75. Mine belonged to my dad and is, I believe, from 1967. At the time, they sold for $25 which in today’s money would be about $200, I guess. On eBay, the sterling-silver ones, like mine, go for anywhere from $100 to $250, depending on what it’s made of, nib size and collectable status.

Mine is the sterling-silver model with the grid pattern, which looks very elegant and slim compared to many of today’s black and bulky fountain pens. I had my dad’s fine nib replaced with a Parker France broad nib, which is more like what we’d call a medium-thickness nib today.

Some of these pens were made in gold and other finishes, and some were made from 1715-era silver coins from a sunken Spanish ship found off the Florida Keys in the late 1960s.

When my brother (thanks, Jeffrey!) gave me this pen a couple of years ago, I had it checked out and the interior-grip cap mechanism replaced by our friends at Fahrney’s, which is a wonderful Washington, DC pen store. Their store is across from the National Press building on F Street, NW, and their repair facility is in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Good folks. Send for their catalog!

These 75s take both the old-fashioned fill-from-a-bottle ink holders and modern-day ink cartridge refills. Tomorrow, I start a new print production assignment at one of my favorite places, so I’ll celebrate by using this pen, filled with the Parker emerald-green ink, which they call Quink for some reason.

Fountain Pens And A Bit Of Doggerel . . .

August 28, 2012

jimpageadmin Fountain Pens, Strange and Pointless , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I like to use the old-fashioned fountain pens. Always have. Here’s the nib of one of my favorites; a Parker Duofold Centennial:

In my mechanical drafting, cartographic and drawing days, I had to use either a ruling pen (the less said about those abominations the better) or the old Koh-i-Noor Rapidographs with India ink. Those were a nightmare if you allowed the India ink to dry and had to clean the pen. And you would and did! In high school, a girl I wanted to date turned me down because my fingernails always looked dirty; I told her it was the darned India ink that kept my fingertips ink stained and was the very Devil to clean. So it goes . . .

A normal fountain pen with normal ink is a lot easier to manage, though I’ve still had a couple of accidents when I’d forget to cap the pen before sticking it back into my pocket. Then you walk around the office with a big blob of ink on your shirt. Luckily, dry cleaners are used to removing those stains!

Now, there was a stretch beginning in the late 1970s where I was filling out FedEx counterfoil labels all the time, and, for that purpose, a fountain pen isn’t the right tool. Reluctantly, I switched to a MontBlanc rollerball pen, but once FedEx labels could be generated online and printed on a laser printer, I went back to fountain pens.

What attracts me to fountain pens are the feel of the pen on paper, the infinite variety of inks available for them and the lovely designs available. The history of the things is overwhelming and it’s fun to look into that.

My collection isn’t extensive; I have a couple of each by the major manufacturers. I prefer a wider nib or pen-point than most folks do and that’s easily achieved with fountain pens.

Here’s the doggerel I promised. It’s from a pen-nib manufacturer in Scotland or England many years ago and at one time, signs with this verse were evidently all over the place in the UK:

Here’s what a box of those nibs looked like.

I still have a few boxes of that type of nib from my high school and college days. The ones I have are made by Speedball or Hunt, but they look just like the ones in that sign.