Esterbrook Nibs Find A New Home

As I became unenamoured with lever fillers, Esterbrooks took a backseat to piston fillers and converters in my rotation. However, I missed their vintage nibs that were produced in great variety including italic and flexible models. Quite a few can still be found on eBay though from reading descriptions, many of those pens will need professional maintenance to regain the capacity to write well. Look for a pen with a new sac if you decide to grab one and it should provide years of good use.

The Esterbrook brand was resurrected a few years ago to the delight of many FP aficionados. I haven’t used one of the new pens so I cannot speak from experience. However, they do offer a Modern to Vintage nib adapter for combining a vintage Estie nib and feed with the modern pen body.

Think about that. A vintage Estie nib can be fitted to a newly manufactured pen body. My old nibs are begging to try out a posh, new home. One of these days…

 

Sunday Reads: Fountain Pens, Ink And A Diplomat

Sonal Kalra has some excellent tips for dealing with pen borrowers…

• The Well-Appointed Desk: Eye Candy: Papier Plume Bad Bad LeRoy Brown & Lake Michigan Winter
• The Pelikan’s Perch: 4001 And Günther Wagner’s Lost But Not Forgotten Pelikan Inks
• Mountain of Ink: Ink Review #650: Kingdom Note Tomato Red
• Rupertarzeian’s Fountain Pen Blog: A look at the Diplomat Excellence A2 fountain pen.
• Hindustan Times: A Calmer You, by Sonal Kalra: Do people keep borrowing your pen?
• Rediscover Analog: Ink Review: Sailor Ink Studio 670

Sunday Reads: Pens, Ink And Happy Hour

So what do pens have to do with happy hour? Read on.

• Pen Chalet: Conklin Duraflex Limited Edition Fountain Pens (If I were in the market for a new pen, this one looks just right.)
• Quick Fountain Pen Review: Nemosine Fission Gunmetal Quick Fountain Pen Review
• Teoh: IndiGraph – This fountain pen can use India ink
• Mountain of Ink: Ink Review #639: Jacques Herbin Ambre de Baltique
• The Pen Addict: Faber-Castell NEO Slim Fountain Pen Review
• Fontana Penna Furore Collection (I like the Arancio but I am always a sucker for that color.)
• Plooms Fountain Pens in the U.K. (Check out the blotters.)
• Forbes: Is Writing With A Pen Better Than Happy Hour?

From the archives, my kit from five years ago. Only one pen has remained a constant in my rotation. Can you guess which one?

Pens: Platinum #3776, Noodler’s Standard Flex, the Pilot Prera Italic and the Sheaffer Taranis Medium. Inks: Diamine Sepia, Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses, Noodler’s Black and Diamine Steel Blue. Autopoint Mechanical Pencil, a daily user that has never failed me.

Sunday Reads: Pens, Writing And Some Birds

Need a new pen? There are several here that I would enjoy. How about you?

• The Well-Appointed Desk: Notebook Review: Compoco Airplane View Journal
• Ferris Wheel Press (pens and inks)
• Benu at Pen Chalet
• The home of Ranga Pens
• United Inkdom: Italix Chaplain’s Tankard
• Kaweco shows frost has a place even in spring
• Quick Fountain Pen Review: What’s In My Pen Case Today?
• Notedian: Why English Author Neil Gaiman Writes with a Fountain Pen
• How to write with a brush pen
• T.K. Coleman: Am I a Writer? Are You? Does it Really Matter?
• This Genius Woman Created a Photo Booth for Birds in Her Backyard

From the archives

Sunday Reads: Lotsa Pen Stuff Plus Extra Credit Questions

This post started out as exclusively pen and ink links but the “Extra Credit Questions” piece begged to be included. I couldn’t resist.

• The Pelikan’s Perch: How To Differentiate The Pelikan 400 From The M400: A Guide
• Mountain of Ink: Small Pen Makers
• Learn Something and Pen Ink on a Leaf
• The Well-Appointed Desk: Eye Candy: Lamy Bronze Al-Star & Fountain Pen Ink
• Introducing Inexpens Fountain Pens (Never used one but they do have a lot of nib choices.)
• Fountain Pen Love: Creating and Keeping A Fountain Pen Ink Journal
• Montegrappa Reaches For the Moon – Introducing Moon Landing LE Pens
• 16 Interesting Office Stationery Facts You Can File Under Amazing
• Extra Credit Questions

From the archives

Make Your Fountain Pens Happy

Fountain pens can be finicky, troublesome, evil tools – or not. It only takes a few simple tips to make that “or not” into a reality.

• For ease of care, choose inks that are medium or lighter in color saturation or intensity. They are less likely to solidify and clog your pen.
• When using deep, intense colors, clean your pen often and use it regularly. Both actions will keep a pen functioning well.
• Write with your pen at least two or three times a week if only to draw some doodles on scrap paper. Doing so will keep the ink flowing. In low humidity conditions, ink may evaporate quickly necessitating more frequent use and refilling.
• Partially filling a converter will satisfy most pens and allow you to see how well you like the color before committing to a full load. If your pen does not write consistent lines with a partial fill, then load it fully.
• Do not put ink back into the bottle as it risks contamination, mold growth and damage to your pens. Toss unused ink. Even a full converter holds only a few drops so the waste is minimal.
• Especially if your pen gets infrequent or intermittent use, clean it between fills. Gently suck up and expel room temperature water repeatedly until the flow is clear or nearly so. If reusing the pen, just fill it with ink after cleaning. If storing the pen, rinse out any leftover ink. Then stand it nib down in a cup with a wad of paper towel at the bottom. Any fluid remaining in the nib will flow into the paper leaving behind a pen that can be stored safely for years. This trick can also be used to empty ink from a pen before cleaning.

Current ink trends favor highly saturated colors as well as dual colors and metallic sheen. Many of these inks have a greater risk for clogging without regular use and frequent cleaning. There will be exceptions, but my observations and recommendations are intended to make fountain pens easy and uncomplicated to use.

Tip: Clean a pen just before it runs out of ink. Lines that become pale are the most obvious indicators though with some ink and pen combinations, there is virtually no warning. The pen will clean more easily if rinsed immediately than if you wait until it is empty and the ink has dried in the nib. If that does happen, it will take a lot more pumping water in and out to achieve a reasonably clean pen.

If you don’t want to waste even a smidge of ink, write until there is no more color coming from the nib. Then clean it as soon as possible. Writing in a restaurant? Ask for an extra glass of water and use it to suck up and expel enough water to rinse most of the ink from your pen. Your server may think you are eccentric, but that’s okay. Your happy pen is worth the effort.

Tip: The fewer pens filled, the easier it is to practice good pen maintenance. Before I had a pen collection, one or two at a time met my needs. I wrote them dry and cleaned them immediately. The few I owned were very well used and perfectly maintained. Even today with a hundred pens on hand, only one or two at a time is all I keep inked unless I need more for reviews.

Happy pens provide the best writing experience. They start immediately, flow without a hiccup, work beautifully with a variety of inks, and come clean without ado.

If you want some suggestions for low maintenance, colorful inks, check out my Short List of Easy Inks.

Pilot Kakuno

A Short List Of Easy Inks

Want to keep things really simple? Fill only a few pens and use inks that make cleaning easy. Enjoyable pen use is sure to follow.

With hundreds of inks on the market, where should you start? Sheaffer, Waterman and Parker Quink inks are quite safe and easy to find. My favorites are Waterman’s Inspired Blue, Serenity Blue, and Mysterious Blue. They are comfortable colors that suit personal correspondence as well as business use, rinse easily from a nib, and work well in any pen. In addition, they are very reasonably priced so there is that to recommend them as well.

Another well-behaved ink is Pilot Blue-Black. The color is subdued but the other characteristics more than compensate for the understated color. Several years ago it became my alternate to Waterman Mysterious Blue for testing pens. That is high praise from an inkophile.

Initially, my ink purchases were from companies that also sold pens. This was based on the assumption that a pen manufacturer would be unlikely to offer ink that would cause damage. Eventually, Waterman and Quink colors seemed too limited so I sought advice from Sam and Frank at Pendemonium. It wasn’t long before well-behaved inks from Diamine and J. Herbin joined my collection including

• Diamine Emerald
• Diamine Sepia
• Diamine Violet
• Diamine Mediterranean Blue
• Diamine Dark Brown
• Diamine Wild Strawberry
• Herbin Lie de The
• Herbin Orange Indien
• Herbin Poussiere de Lune
• Herbin Perle Noir

This group of colors cleaned easily and was perfect for a novice. For water-resistant ink, I turned to Noodler’s Black or Lexington Gray. They are slightly higher maintenance but only marginally so.

My list of inks is always changing since new brands and colors arrive every year. Among those new releases are certain to be at least a few that will be low maintenance. In my experience, blacks, blues and greens rinse out more easily than other colors. And if it’s easy to clean, you are more likely to do it frequently, right?

If you want to try Pilot Blue-Black but your preferred retailer doesn’t offer the brand, it can be found at Amazon in three sizes, 30ml, 70ml, and a humongous 350ml bottle for around $22. The latter comes in a tall, thin container that is unsuitable for pen filling. However, a thoroughly cleaned, empty ink bottle would make a nice home for a more practical amount of ink. A benefit to decanting is that the ink remaining in the larger bottle is less likely to become contaminated. Store the bottle in a dark place where moldy little beasties won’t thrive and color won’t degrade, and that Pilot BBk should last a very long time.

All of these inks continue to rotate through my pens and that is the best recommendation. However, my list is not definitive. Is there an ink you would add?