New Fountain Pens and Inks
It really looks as if this Fountain-pen thing is not just some passing fad. As ridiculous as it may sound, this new hobby has been quite a blast; I’m finding that I’m writing just for the fun of handwriting — I don’t know — perhaps an hour or so a day? I’m not timing myself.
Over the weekend, I added a few inks and pens to the collection:
- Noodler’s Ahab Flex Fountain Pen — Arizona
- Jinhao X450 Fountain Pen — Blue Twist
- Jinhao X750 Fountain Pen — Shimmering Sands
- Noodler’s Apache Sunrise — ink
- Noodler’s Gruene Cactus — Eel ink
- Noodler’s Rattler Red — Eel ink
Here’s a sample of writing with the pens, loaded with inks:
Everything (except the Apache Sunrise ink) came from The Goulet Pen Company. The Jinhao X750 was an unexpected surprise — if you ordered any Jinhao pen, you received that one as a bonus.
Apache Sunrise is a fun ink for getting some dramatic color variations; colors can range from light yellows to deep reds — this is referred to as ink shading and is based on how the ink pools. (The banner photo at the top of this page demonstrates this nicely.) I ordered this ink specifically for the Ahab Flex pen. Not only does this pen have a flexible nib, but even the “Arizona Model” of this pen is a perfect match for this ink. Basically, add some pressure to get more ink on the paper for darker colors, lighten up — can you get the pale yellows. Again, this is a fun combination of pen and ink to play with.
The Jinhao pens are SOLID, and heavy. They have a nice pump system to fill ink reservoirs. If you hold the pen correctly, they seem to write smoothly. I do not really hold a fountain pen straight on, I hold it to the side, so I had some start stop problems using the pen. My wife has no problems at all with these pens as her grip is more standard.
Both the Gruene Cactus and the Rattler Red inks from Noodlers are eel inks. These are lubricating inks. We opted for these as we read some reviews that some of the nibs were hard to start with the Ahab Flex pen. These were stand-by optional inks if I had trouble with the Apache Sunrise. But it seems there was no trouble with that ink in that pen.
So, we now have some new pen/ink combinations and colors to play with.
After using all these pens last night, I must say that I still feel the Pilot Metropolitan Fine Nib is my best writing pen so far. I returned to it with a renewed appreciation for this fine writing instrument. And I continue to work on my Spencerian penmanship.
🙂