| [Ben]: | Fountain Pens | Discuss This [0 comments so far] View Comments | For some strange reason, I decided I wanted to get into fountain pens. Thankfully, you can buy pens these days that don't require an eyedropper and a change of clothes. Pilot sells a few economy fountain pens such as the Plumix (what I bought) and even a disposable model known as the Varsity. The Plumix uses a single-use cartridge - essentially a plastic tube of ink that is pierced when you mount it. I bought one at Target for about $6 - far more than I'd normally pay for a pen, but it is about as cheap as reusable fountain pens can be had for.
Mine has been on my desk at work for a little while now and I've found that I really enjoy fountain pens - at least the less messy cartridge-fed versions. The feel of writing with a fountain pen is very different from the feel of a ball-point or gel pen and with the italic nib you can write beautifully ... if you can write beautifully with a regular pen, anyway. For some reason, when I'm using my new pen I tend to take my time which makes even my terrible handwriting almost legible.
I would have preferred black over the blue ink that mine came with, but when I run out of the blue ink I'll reorder black.
As with any hobby, this is one that could quickly get expensive. Some Namiki pens (Pilot's elite line) run for multiple thousands of dollars, and their cheapest is over a hundred. For that reason, I think I'm going to stick with the cheapest pens. |
| 2009-06-05
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