POTD - Pen of the Day

[Coche_y_bondhu]

Hello All,

Thanks to Randy and that LONG thread some time ago on fountain pens, I decided to enter the portal of fine writing instruments. Even joined a local fountain pen club here, the North Texas Fountain Pen Club. Haven't been to a pen show yet. The Dallas Pen Show will be here during the last week of September and I am already committed on a flyfishing trip to Idaho during that timeframe.

I know some SMF members are also at The Fountain Pen Network. I have seen Randy, Howard, Tony, Johnnie, and Jay Polaski.

I only have 12 pens so far. This pastime can get expensive in a hurry (and we shavers thought brushes and colognes were expensive!). So I keep telling myself, "I am not a collector, I am not a collector, I am not ...".

So just for fun, I'll start a Pen of the Day topic (we already have a SOTD so...). Like the SOTD, this may spur other members into trying a fountain pen, either for the first time or a reacquaintance with a long lost friend who has been languishing in a drawer somewhere.

This is a Parker 50 Falcon in a brown & gold motif, with a stiff, but buttery smooth medium nib. A club member graciously found this one for me at the Chicago Pen Show last month. It is inked with Visconti Bordeaux (burgundy). Comes nicely equipped with a sac versus a converter. I fell in love with this pen at the first club meeting I attended. The speaker was doing a presentation on Parkers that you don't see all the time. He passed around one of these and like Floris Santal was my love at first scent, this Falcon was just made for my hand. A perfect fit. I had to have one. It took two months, but my patience payed off.



Shaving and pens, as someone mentioned in another post, go together nicely.

So what do you write with these days? Please share your quills with us!

Just for fun!

Cheers,

Richard in Texas

PS Tony, I know you went to the Raleigh Pen Show and bought some goodies. Do show us what you got when you get a chance!

[rtaylor61]

Richard,

Very cool! I'll try to scrounge up something to add to this over the weekend. Nice looking Parker!

Randy

[Gatorade]

If you dig deep enough at FPN you might find a post or two by me. Like this one about how to store all the stuff associated with pens.

[Leisureguy]

Lately the pen I've been carrying is the Pelikan LeVel---the Level 5, or L5. I have the silver capped one, with a broad point I ground to italic shape. It holds a LOT of ink, injected with their special ink bottle (which I refilled with Waterman Florida Blue).

[Tye]

My POTD lately have been my retro 51 Tornado ballpoints. I found that if I take a foumtain pen to work I end up letting a client use it to sign something and they act like the harder they press, the better the pen is going to work. Also, if I had to suggest a company to stay away from it's be www.thewritersedge.com . I ordered 2 pens from them back on the 21st of May and haven't heard from them since. Just my $61 dollars and change. I'm sticking with Pen City from now on.

~Tye

[Austin]

Mont Blanc rollerball for this past week.

[4hits]

Thankfully I'm left handed and my very early experiences with fountain pens was one big shmear after another.

Now please, please...I'm begging you, please. Please do not tell me left handers can use fountain pens, and use them successfully. And definitely do not give me any links to websites extolling the virtues and illustrating how left handers can use these beautiful instruments - oh crap.

[Coche_y_bondhu]

Randy,

Pardner, you were the one who lured me into this fountain pen pastime! I know you have a Phileas or two somewhere!

Charlie,

That is my dilemma as well. Growing pains. As I type, my wife is sewing me a straw gold color flat pen rest, 7" x 21", with a gilded edge. Just something to place my pens on for the top of the dresser. Since all my pens are inked and in rotation, I prefer to keep them lying down. I think it keeps the nibs from drying out too fast. She is also sewing me a smaller pen rest, 7" x 4", for the office desk.

Michael,

Pictures?

Tye,

Some people keep an inexpensive pen on hand just to lend to people, preferring to keep their good pens safely in their own hands. People claim that a pen's nib adopts the writing style and slant of the owner over time. I don't know. Haven't owned any of my pens very long.

Austin,

What a beauty! It actually looks like a FP from the pix. The recessed MB emblem is unique. Tell me you have a matching FP, yes?

Danl,

Ok.

Cheers,

Richard in Texas

[Austin]

Richard, I stopped buying fountain pens a few years ago. I still have a few that I use from time to time.

[Leisureguy]

Danl, I introduced italic handwriting (aka chancery cursive) at a school where I taught. The nib used is a stub sort of nib: square and thin. As you hold it at a constant angle, it produces letters with thick and thin strokes.

Left-handers used the same nib as right handers, but were taught to turn the paper 90 degrees so that the paper was sideways, and they then wrote vertically down the sheet, top to bottom (actually, left side to right side, but with the sheet thus oriented, it was top to bottom). Their hand was thus in the unwritten portion of the sheet---no smearing---and the grip was comfortable and just like the right-handed grip. The angle of the stub point was also correct for the shading.

It took only a short time for them to become accustomed to writing vertically, and the greater comfort and the freedom from smearing made the change well worthwhile.

Just a thought.

[notthesharpest]

Thankfully I'm left handed and my very early experiences with fountain pens was one big shmear after another.

Now please, please...I'm begging you, please. Please do not tell me left handers can use fountain pens, and use them successfully. And definitely do not give me any links to websites extolling the virtues and illustrating how left handers can use these beautiful instruments - oh crap.

Read this.
Sorry.

[rtaylor61]

If you dig deep enough at FPN you might find a post or two by me. Like this one about how to store all the stuff associated with pens.

I was thinking I would post a pic of my Rotring Core today, but since Charlie has put 4 of them in plain sight, WITH a way to store them, I believe I'll pass.

Nice collection!

Randy

[tonyespo]

Here are my Parker's









I have some other pens but I love the Parkers and that is mostly what I buy.

[Coche_y_bondhu]

Hello Tony,

That's what I hear about "collecting" pens - you need to decide on what you are going to collect, like you and Parkers. I recall you sold off most of your other pens a couple of months ago.

The speaker at our fountain pen club meeting this past Wednesday collects brands of fountain pens. He has over 2000 fountain pens. Wow. I guess if you have the money, storage and time to search, you can work with a broad theme. Too broad for me I'm afraid.

I don't have a theme since I don't really collect; I have assembled a working group of inked pens. Sounds good, eh? I use a different one each day and each pen has a different ink in it. For variety. I guess the inks are like our shave creams and colognes, the pens are like our brushes and razors and the writing paper is like our faces? I digress again.

So Tony, what did u get at the Raleigh show?

Cheers,

Richard in Texas

[tonyespo]

Richard this is the best pen I bought at the Show.







It's a Parker Frontier Flighter. The nib has been ground to a stub, Italic. A lady named Deb Kinney from Durham, NC sold me the pen and did the nib. It writes like a dream. I can't put it down. I am running out of things to write about. I also picked up a Parker 45 with med nib and a very nice Parker 21 in red. I got some Noodlers Inks. I bought some nib floss and barrel polish. I met some of the guys from FPN. The back issues of Stylus Mag were free. I got to look at, but didn't touch a $20000 solid gold pen. You know how badly I wanted that baby.

I wish Charlotte had a pen club. I would like to spend more time with other members with the same interest.

I still have other makes of pens and I am thinking about selling them all. Hint, Hint....

[CMur12]

...I guess the inks are like our shave creams and colognes, the pens are like our brushes and razors and the writing paper is like our faces? ...

Hi Richard -

That's the truth!

I'm still grieving the fact that Parker discontinued their English-made Penman line of inks. I have yet to find a suitable substitute for their Penman Sapphire. Parker Quink black has always been one of my favorites for black ink, but Quink blue is in no way comparable to Penman Sapphire.

- Murray

[Coche_y_bondhu]

Tony,

Why not start a Charlotte fountain pen club yourself? Should be easy to get the word out here and on FPN. I like that Frontier. Something about silver and gold; they just go so well together don't you think?

Murray,

Toiletry manufacturers just stop making our favorite shave creams and colognes with no apparent reason or warning. Ink manufacturers, I'm afraid, have the same tendencies.

Cheers,

Richard in Texas

PS Tony, I will be posting 3 more Parkers in the next couple of weeks.

[drmoss_ca]

You likee gold Parker? Here gold Parker (a bit fuzzy as I can't handhold 1/6 sec the way I used to!):







I bought this one for my wife as she was jealous of mine.

Chris

[Coche_y_bondhu]

Hello Chris,

Holy moly! Now that's a pen! And you've got two?

You gettin' all this, Tony?

Cheers,

Richard in TX

[tonyespo]

Chris, WOW!!! U da man. If you ever want to sell the mens model of that pen I want to be notified. Is that a 14K or 18K? The one at the show was 18K. It was valued at $20,000. It had never been dipped or touched paper. I could had sold the Boxster and bought the pen, but how would I drive home?