Pens, Pencils, Paper, & Ink

I was surprised to discover recently that I have seven vintage Sheaffer pens with the Feather Touch No. 5 nib. Surprised, I think, because until a short time ago, this particular Sheaffer nib just hadn't made much of an impression on me. Not that I thought they were bad nibs, it was just that among my many Sheaffers I have so many excellent triumph, No. 3, No. 33, Lifetime, and inlaid nibs that the Feather Touch nibs were lost in the crowd. The best nib I have ever written with was an extra-fine inlaid nib on my father's PFM III. One of my absolute favorites in my current collection is a fine palladium triumph nib on a Statesman snorkel: smooth, wet, never skips, a true pleasure. And I have a host of other excellent vintage Sheaffer nibs. But the Feather Touch nibs, despite my having seven of them, had slipped under my radar. As I recall, the first couple of times I had used these nibs I found them either a bit scratchy or just a little lacking in personality in comparison to o...

Brown ink, that is. Like many of you, I take as much pleasure in exploring new inks as I do in searching for new pens. This amounts to testing a sample of the nearly infinite combinations of pens and inks. Finding just the right ink for each pen is for me one of the more enjoyable aspects of this crazy hobby/passion. As one would expect, the most commonly used fountain pen inks are innumerable brands and shades of black, blue, and blue-black, clearly subjects for investigation in future entries of this blog. But today let's look at a few of the brown inks I use regularly. I enjoy using shades of brown for portions of lecture notes (usually mathematical proofs) and for grading student papers. You will notice in the sample above that each ink is used with a different pen. (Clicking on the image will call up a larger image to see the inks more clearly.) I decided not to try a direct comparison by using each ink in the same pen, but rather just to illustrate a few favorite pen and ink ...

Although this blog will focus mostly on fountain pens and ink, I have decided to begin with a look at my favorite mechanical pencil, the Pentel Sharp Kerry, which in fact is very pen-like. With its cap on, the Kerry looks a lot like a pen; it has good weight and balance, and its length of 4-15/16" is perfect for carrying in a shirt pocket. With the cap removed and posted, the lead is advanced through a standard push-button mechanism on the cap end; under the push button is the small eraser. To access the barrel for additional leads, you remove the barrel-end cap, not the eraser. I prefer to use this pencil with the cap posted; its length is then 5-1/8", and I find its weight and balance to be close to perfect for my relatively small hands. You can also use the Kerry without the cap posted; its length is then only 4-3/16", a bit too short even for me. The Kerry comes in 0.5mm and 0.7mm sizes. At a minimum the following colors are available: metallic blue, metallic red, b...

Most of the people I know care little about the objects of this blog. To them writing instruments are merely tools, and pedestrian ones at that. Any plastic pen, any paper, any type of ink suffices to write grocery lists, letters (increasingly rare in this day of email, cell phones, and text messaging), class notes, etc. But for a small minority of us, great pleasure is derived from using a quality pen or pencil to write on quality paper. The writing tools themselves enhance the whole writing experience, thus becoming more than tools but instead essential components of writing. Like nearly everyone today, I use email and do a lot of writing on the computer. Yet I still do a great deal of writing every day using pen or pencil and paper, and I do actually write letters by longhand. But there is an even smaller number of people who take this a step further; for us acquiring and using pens, pencils, paper, and ink is both a hobby and a passion. We read online forums devoted to fountain pen...