I don’t know where you are based, but if in the USA be aware that Sailor pens have a dramatic markup over the home and other foreign markets. I generally advocate buying local but both my Sailors have come from abroad and saved me a lot of money. Actually I probably wouldn’t have brought them at all if paying US prices. My Pro Gear Imperial Black came form Amazon Japan for $200. The same pen is $470 plus tax in the US! My Cult Pens exclusive Gunmetal PGS Midnight Sky was $180. Regular PGS run around $220 and that is without the plating on the Cult Pens edition
Buying from abroad has its risks and drawbacks but when using a reputable seller it can save you $$$. The Gentleman Stationer discusses the situation here in his re-review of the Imperial Black. gentlemanstationer.com/…/battle-scars-revisiting-…
Also be aware that the 21k nib, while having very little flex, is actually quite soft and easily sprung or bent if roughly handled.
Did you keep your Visconti Bronze Age? That is one of the few pens left on my wish list but I know their nib QC is abysmal and if/when I have the funds I know I will have a hard time paying their prices for a pen that I’d probably have to send straight off to a nibmeister.
Thanks for the response. Any particular retailer you would recommend buying from? Is buying from Amazon JP fairly straightforward from the States or do you need a VPN or something? I'm not at all opposed to buying abroad, I've bought several of my more expensive pens from La Couronne du Comte (R.I.P.) and Appelboom since they used to include VAT in their MSRPs and remove it if you shipped to the States (and often with free, very fast shipping thanks to DHL! Just had to wait weeks or months for stock sometimes). Sadly this doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
I'm used to all manner of gold and titanium nibs so not too worried about man-handling the nib.
No I don't have either Visconti anymore. I initially got the Bronze Age in EF, second-hand, and unfortunately the vacuum piston got snagged while cleaning one time and totalled the nib. I bought a BB unit to replace it, and that wrote TERRIBLY. I had bought the Dark Age brand new in the meantime (with an F nib) that also wrote terribly. I sent that one for work, but by the time it came back I realized I hated so many things about the pens (the capping mechanism can become mushy for seemingly no reason, with no way to ever clean it out or recover it, you never know how much ink you have, filling is an absolute pain unless you pay extra for the special inkwell, and if you use it you soak ink in to the section which will slowly leech out on to your fingers indefinitely, no matter how much you clean it, thanks to the weird way the porous material interacts with temperature and moisture) that I traded them both. The Dark Age at least wrote well by that point, but I had to sell the other as known needing work. Yes you should unfortunately budget to send a Visconti to a nibmeister if you decide to buy one (and probably buy a tipping size large to make sure it arrives with enough material to work with - Italian sizing is incredibly unreliable). The QC really bothered me but the more new pens I bought the more I realized essentially all of them have terrible QC out of the box.
Both Nakayas I've had ran dry after a page or two unless the feed is under pressure. I have had to send half my (new) Montblancs to have nibs replaced, reground, or flow issues solved. The brands I've had the best luck with (bought at least two and had no issues) are Lamy, Pelikan, and TWSBI.
The only pens I still have are:
Conid (currently being modified to take a vintage 1970s 146 nib)
Both Lamy 2000s (one B, one F)
Montblanc 145 (M), 146P (BB, modified), 1960s 149 (EF, flexy, unknown if modified, undisputed king of fountain pens for me), Heritage 1912 (B CI, modified), Slimline (XXF, modified)
Nakaya Decapod (EF, flexy, has issues, don't care enough to fix, but gorgeous)
Pelikan M200 (F), M800 (M)
TWSBI 580 (EF)
Waterman Phileas Blue (M CI, modified but didn't need it, just to add character - my first fountain pen and one of my last gifts from my late mother)
Sounds like your VIsconti experience echos my worst fears. I hadn’t considered the porous nature of the material being an issue for absorbing ink but that would also annoy me greatly. Thanks for the feedback.
In terms of overseas suppliers. Ordering from Amazon Japan was no different to Amazon US or UK. I didn’t even need a to create a new account. When buying from Amazon I normally ensure the seller is Amazon itself rather than a third party to avoid fakes although apparently this isn’t foolproof as Amazon sometimes mixes their own stock with that of third parties (see a recent Pilot Metro post). Cult Pens have been excellent and I’ve use them several times. They left a Lamy nib out of one order I placed but quickly expedited it to me when I contacted them to report it was missing. Their prices are good and you can get free shipping if you spend enough. I’ve also used The Pen Company for one order and they were great. I’ve heard good things about Pensachi but have not personally used them.
Unfortunately prices at Cult Pens and TPC look pretty much identical to USA prices... of course the model I gravitated towards (1911 L Trinity) just so happens to be a USA exclusive also. Ugh.
EDIT: Looks like the Sailor Profit Black Master is basically the same pen and $200 from Amazon Japan. I can live with that. Thanks.
Report back about how you like it when it arrives.
You will get a warning notice with this pen because it is ion plated. Sailor will advise to only use their inks in it to avoid plating damage and early reports from ion plated nib owners did suggest that the plating could be damaged, presumably from non-Sailor ink usage. There has been a lot of speculation about why this happened but a general consensus was that acidic inks could be the issue.
Both my Sailors are ion plated and I have chosen not to stick to Sailor only inks but have resiolved to be be selective about what I do put in it. Pilot Iroshizuku inks are generally neutral to slightly alkaline as are the original Herbin line and the DeAtramentis Document line. Waterman inks can be very acidic so stay clear of them despite their great reputation (Serenity Blue has an acidity similar to vinegar). There are a number of websites that have measured the acidity of popular inks you can reference. Also, a number of forum posts on Fountain Pen Network report and discuss the acidity of specific inks.
Well, mark one for Amazon JP, the pen got here super quick. It's gorgeous. Mark one against Sailor though, they include a single proprietary cartridge and no converter in the box with a $200+ pen?!
That’s unfortunate, thank you for giving it a solid try!
My primary instance is stable, and the admin is quite able. I’d consider stepping up. I definitely don’t want to be the only mod for any period of time. It’s not just the time commitment, it’s the implicit non-democratic status of the sub when one person makes all the mod calls. I’m @____ there, incidentally.
Edit: Went ahead and created it as a placeholder, pending any necessary further discussion or other volunteers here. !fountainpens
Since content is instance-dependent, it might be nice to have a mirror on some other stable instance - not sure how to sync them so both get each others’ posts, but don’t duplicate though. This group in particular tends to have a lot of high-quality content and losing it is a blow - especially to noobs, who we actively want to be friendly and accessible to.
Is there a library for the API? Would be nice to seed a new community with some/all of the content here, if you don’t object. Not like the reddit mirror bot posting a ton of things, but for initial content. Would prefer not to lose it all.
@MidwayTheMagnificent I guess you could always archive posts and whatnot on wayback machine or archive.ph and follow the fediverse links for the full discussions? (i.e. the fediverse icon next to each comment/post).
I'll try and archive myself as many threads as possible as well.
It sucks because I found many interesting communities on this server besides the Fountain Pen one.
That could work and is simpler - Might be scriptable, have to think on that. Don’t recall whether the request archive button is a GET or POST. Parsing out the links to posts and throwing away the others would be straightforward, ‘if /post/ in url’
I do know that I won’t get to it today - my work is finance-adjacent, and with a deadline in the next week, work is keeping me rather busier than usual.
@MidwayTheMagnificent I personally just finished archiving @onebag@happiness and @solotravel. Both on wayback machine and on archive.ph for redundance. I archived both post links and post links with ?scrollToComments=true. Good luck with the rest whenever you can if you start to 😁 It's already late here for me.
B6 has become my go-to size notebook for journaling. Used to be a committed A5 guy but the slightly smaller B6 is just handier for most situations, while still being more generous than a “pocket” size.
For the life of me I don’t understand the weirdly proportioned “B6 Slim” and its popularity.
I think b6 slim love comes purely from the traveler’s notebook. And even then that’s a format most were putting up with rather than enjoying. But you know how things go when things get popular. People just start doing the popular thing, including for capturing that same aesthetic, and the b6 slim travelers notebook has a very particular aesthetic thanks to how long and tall it is
Oh, that’s sad. I wish I could help, but I don’t have much experience in hosting anything on the web. I could try, but I’m afraid it will end in a disaster.
Well, thank you and everyone else on this instance. Community is quite nice here.
@coys25 Yama-Budo and Momiji from the Iroshizuku line seem to be the default for many people, me included. But I’m low key on the lookout for more inks at the moment, so I’ll stick around and see other people’s suggestions.
Unlined A5 Clairefontaine for journals, Kokuyo B5 Campus Notebooks for study, and whatever is available for loose-leaf or temporary notes (I do have a lined A4 Rhodia pad in case I need to write something good on a single sheet, but I never do).
Perhaps if I got into letter-writing I might be more interested in exotic papers, but I'm quite content with using things that are pretty easy to find and shouldn't be disappearing from sale anytime soon. I also don't use anything larger than a western M, so I don't need super amazing paper for a lot of my general notes.
Mostly Leuchtturm, mainly because I really like their notebooks and the variety of them that are available. The paper is fine, but not like tomoe or anything like that. I mostly write at work during meetings etc., so the notebook is equally important to me. Open to other suggestions though!
At the beginning of every workday I write a to-do list on paper with pen and cross the items out as soon as I’m done with them. I also take notes on paper when I read and review papers, it helps me retain the information better. My phone and my computer screen are often the main source of distraction for me and my notebook helps me keep the focus on the task.
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